Who’s looking at the Voorwerp?

I just got a notification from the XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre that our observations of IC 2497 and the Voorwerp have now been scheduled for April 19th. XMM-Newton is esa’s flagship X-ray satellite and can observe photons from 0.2-10 keV. We’ve already got our hard X-ray observations from Suzaku last year, so XMM will have a second, detailed look at the softer X-rays. Also, if there’s anything there, then XMM will give us a very rough image; Suzaku can’t take images, only spectra. After the data are taken, it may take a few weeks for esa to process the raw data before they send it to us. Stay tuned…