The first broad-band X-ray images and spectra of the 30 Doradus region in the LMC

We present the XMM-Newton first light image, taken in January 2000 with the EPIC pn camera during the instrument's commissioning phase, when XMM-Newto n was pointing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The field is rich in different kinds of X-ray sources: point sources, supernova remnants (SNR s) and diffuse X-ray emission from LMC interstellar gas. The observations a re of unprecedented sensitivity, reaching a few 10(32) erg/s for point sour ces in the LMC. We describe how these data sets were analysed and discuss s ome of the spectroscopic results. For the SNR N157B the power law spectrum is clearly steeper than previously determined from ROSAT and ASCA data. The existence of a significant thermal component is evident and suggests that N157B is not a Crab-like but a composite SNR. Most puzzling is the spectrum of the LMC hot interstellar medium, which indicates a significant overabun dance of Ne and Mg of a few times solar.