XMM-Newton Observation of the Northeastern Limb of the Cygnus Loop

In this paper we performed moderate-resolution spectroscopy on the data obtained with XMM-Newton of the northeastern limb of the Cygnus Loop. This observation was proposed as a higher resolution follow-up to that made by ASCA. We investigated the radial variation of the temperature, ionization timescale, elemental abundances, and hydrogen column density across our field of view. We confirmed that on average all the abundances are depleted. However, we could not confirm the jump structure found by Miyata et al. in the physical properties of the plasma at 0.9R_S. We also detected what looks like a new line in our spectra which probably comes from C VI. Comparing our results for heavy element abundances with those from Suzaku, we found that they agree to within a factor of 2-3. The heavy element ratios relative to O were relatively constant across the field of view and a comparison with models shows that the ISM in this part of the remnant was probably created by low- to intermediate-mass stars.