Reflecting on XMM-Newton by europeanspaceagency on Flickr.

A través de Flickr:
Reflection patterns off one of the gold-plated spare mirrors of ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope shows a side of the mission rarely seen.

Captivating images of supernova remnants, stellar explosions and black hole environments are just some of the high-energy phenomena that go hand-in-hand with XMM-Newton.

By contrast, this image shows the journey that light particles from these objects might make on their way to the space telescope’s detectors.

In this artistic shot patterns are created by light reflected in one of the gold-plated mirrors. XMM-Newton’s three telescopes each contain 58 mirrors like this, and are among the most powerful ever developed.

The mirrors are only one millimetre thick and nested inside one another, rather like the layers of a leek. This construction earned the mission its name: X-ray Multi-Mirrors, while also honouring the physicist Sir Isaac Newton.

The mirrors are curved in such a way to ensure that the incoming X-rays are reflected twice and focused onto a detector in a single point.

XMM-Newton was launched on 10 December 1999, exactly 13 years ago today, and is still working well in orbit around Earth.

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Credits: ESA