The first broad-band X-ray images and spectra of the 30 Doradus region in the LMC ^*

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, 85748 Garching, Germany
² Istituto di Fisica Cosmica "G. Occhialini", Via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
³ Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
⁴ KETEK GmbH, Am Isarbach 30, 85764 Oberschleißheim, Germany
⁵ Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik der Univ. Tübingen, Waldhäuserstr. 64, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
⁶ XMM Science Operations Centre, Space Science Division ESTEC, Postbus 299, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands
⁷ Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

Corresponding author: K. Dennerl, kod@mpe.mpg.de

Received: 13 October 2000
Accepted: 24 October 2000

Abstract

We present the XMM-Newton first light image, taken in January 2000 with the EPIC pn camera during the instrument's commissioning phase, when XMM-Newton was pointing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The field is rich in different kinds of X-ray sources: point sources, supernova remnants (SNRs) and diffuse X-ray emission from LMC interstellar gas. The observations are of unprecedented sensitivity, reaching a few 10 erg/s for point sources in the LMC. We describe how these data sets were analysed and discuss some of the spectroscopic results. For the SNR N157B the power law spectrum is clearly steeper than previously determined from ROSAT and ASCA data. The existence of a significant thermal component is evident and suggests that N157B is not a Crab-like but a composite SNR. Most puzzling is the spectrum of the LMC hot interstellar medium, which indicates a significant overabundance of Ne and Mg of a few times solar.