ESA Looks Further Back In Time
Europe's X- ray Multi Mirror (XMM) space telescope goes on show for the first time on Tuesday 10 February 1998. When it is launched in 1999 into an orbit 70,000 miles above the earth, XMM will search for cosmic x-rays from the intensely hot areas of our galaxy and beyond. Sources of these x-rays include black holes, the nucleii of quasars, vampire stars, white dwarfs and exploding stars. While the Hubble Space Telescope is able to measure light from objects with temperatures of a few thousand degrees Kelvin, XMM will detect light from objects as hot as 10 million degrees Kelvin. The unique sensitivity of XMM will also allow it to probe far back in time, to explore the Universe when it was p