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After a series of engineering exposures, the three EPIC cameras of the XMM (X-ray Multi-mirror Mission), the European Space Agency astronomy satellite that was launched December 10, 1999, take their first images of three different extragalactic regions of the Universe: part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Hickson Cluster Group 16 (HCG-16), and the star HR 1099. The Large Magellanic Cloud, also known as the Nebula Major, is about 20,000 light-years in diameter. The HCG-16 is one of approximately a hundred compact galaxy clusters listed by Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson in the 1980s. HR 1099 is a sixth magnitude star located about a 100 light-years from the Sun.
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