XMM-Newton Users Handbook

3.7 Comparison with other X-ray satellites

A basic comparison of XMM-Newton's properties with those of Chandra, ROSAT, ASCA, RXTE, Swift, Suzaku and NuSTAR is given in Table 28. It is immediately clear that Chandra and XMM-Newton have complementary characteristics and that both have constituted a new generation of X-ray missions, with enormously improved capabilities compared to their predecessors ASCA, ROSAT and RXTE.

Table 28: Comparison of XMM-Newton with other X-ray satellites

Satellite	Mirror PSF	Mirror PSF	E range	A$_{\bf e}$ at 1 keV	Orbital target	Energy resolution
	FWHM [$~{\bf ''}$]	HEW [$~{\bf ''}$]	[keV]	[cm$^{\bf 2}$]$^a$	visibility [hr]	at 1 keV [eV]
XMM-Newton	6	15	0.15 - 12	4650$^b$	36.7$^c$	4 (RGS)
Chandra	0.2$^d$	0.5$^d$	0.1 - 10	555 (ACIS-S)	44.4$^c$	1 (HETG)
ROSAT	3.5	7	0.1 - 2.4	400	1.3$^e$	500
ASCA	73	174	0.5 - 10	350	0.9$^e$	100
Suzaku	96 - 120	108 - 138	0.2 - 600	1760 (XIS)	0.72$^e$	50
RXTE	n.a.$^g$	n.a.$^g$	2-250	n.a.$^g$	1$^e$	n.a.$^g$
Swift	8.8	18$^f$	0.2-10 (XRT)	133.5	$\sim$0.8$^e$	70
NuSTAR	18	58	3-79	n.a.$^g$	$\sim$0.8$^e$	n.a.$^g$

Notes to Table 28:
a) Mirror effective area.
b) Note that Figs. 11 and 12 do not just show the mirror effective areas but have the EPIC detector responses included as well.
c) Orbital visibility outside the particle-radiation dominated zone.
d) The Chandra High Resolution Camera (HRC) spatial response is well matched to the mirror resolution and the intrinsic on-axis PSF of the HRC is well modelled by a Gaussian with a FWHM of 0.4 arcsec. The spatial resolution for on-axis imaging with the ACIS instrument is limited by the physical size of the CCD pixels (0.492 arcsec) and not the mirrors.
e) Low orbit with Earth occultation.
f) At 1.5 keV.
g) n.av.: not available, n.a.: not applicable.

Some special strengths of XMM-Newton are e.g.:

• Extreme sensitivity to extended emission.

• High-resolution spectroscopy (RGS) with simultaneous medium-resolution spectroscopy and imaging (EPIC) and optical/UV observations (OM).

• High sensitivity (EPIC) at high energies.

• Excellent low energy response down to 0.15 keV.

• High time resolution (EPIC).