The best way to obtain XMM data is to go to the XMM-Newton Observation Lokator (sic!) and search for all observations for a given position or object. Check whether the data modes of the instruments are what you want by clicking on the ObsID column. Unless you know what you are doing, do not bother with timing mode observations.

Click on public date to see a quick overview of the observation which contains EPIC images and the RGS spectrum.

If the pictures look o.k., then click on download ODF to download the data. Generally, you will want to download the data to the /scratch disk, i.e., before downloading you will have to create a directory on /scratch:

mkdir /scratch/phsdak

NOTE: The /scratch-disks are local to the machine you are currently working on, so you will have to remember the machine on which you downloaded the data. Also, /scratch-disks are not backed up, i.e., after the data extraction, you will need to save your results to somewhere safe! At a minimum, save the scripts you will create in the following such that you can rerun them in case your data are lost (and yes, harddisks do fail and you will someday erroneously delete some data!).

The downloaded data will have a name similar to 0112780401.tar.gz