The first decade of science with Chandra and XMM-Newton

For the past decade X-ray astronomers have enjoyed the luxury of a stream of results from two outstanding orbiting X-ray observatories, NASA's Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton. A review in this issue sums up their achievements. Cosmic X-rays are produced at high energies — by gravitational and magnetic fields around neutron stars and black holes for instance — and data from Chandra and XMM-Newton have made it possible to make precise measurements of the energy of cosmic X-rays and to produce some remarkable images. This review features in the International Year of Astronomy package on http://go.nature.com/Z35PCw.