A&A 414, L49-L52 (2004)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20031761

Letter

Detection of Saturnian X-ray emission with XMM-Newton

J.-U. Ness, J. H. M. M. Schmitt and J. Robrade

Hamburger Sternwarte, Universität Hamburg, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany
(Received 5 December 2003 / Accepted 19 December 2003)

Abstract
The giant planet Saturn was observed by XMM-Newton in September 2002. We present and analyse these XMM-Newton observations and compare our findings to the Chandra observations of Saturn. Contamination of the XMM-Newton data by optical light is found to be severe in the medium and thin filters, but with the thick filter all optical light is sufficiently blocked and the signal observed in this filter is interpreted as genuine X-ray emission, which is found to qualitatively and quantitatively resemble Saturn's Chandra spectrum very well.

Key words: planets and satellites: general -- planets and satellites individual: Saturn -- X-rays: general

Offprint request: J.-U. Ness, jness@hs.uni-hamburg.de

© ESO 2004