Among evolved massive stars likely in transition to the Wolf-Rayet phase , IRC +10420 is probably one of the most enigmatic .
It belongs to the category of yellow hypergiants and it is characterized by quite high mass loss episodes .
Even though IRC +10420 benefited of many observations in several wavelength domains , it has never been a target for an X-ray observatory .
We report here on the very first dedicated observation of IRC +10420 in X-rays , using the XMM-Newton satellite .
Even though the target is not detected , we derive X-ray flux upper limits of the order of 1–3 \times 10 ^ { -14 } erg cm ^ { -2 } s ^ { -1 } ( between 0.3 and 10.0 keV ) , and we discuss the case of IRC +10420 in the framework of emission models likely to be adequate for such an object .
Using the Optical/UV Monitor on board XMM-Newton , we present the very first upper limits of the flux density of IRC +10420 in the UV domain ( between 1800 and 2250 Å and between 2050 and 2450 Å ) .
Finally , we also report on the detection in this field of 10 X-ray and 7 UV point sources , and we briefly discuss their properties and potential counterparts at longer wavelengths .