Results from NA49 Original Research Article

An overview of results from the CERN experiment NA49 is presented with emphasis on most recent measurements. NA49 has systematically studied the dependence of hadron production on energy and system size or centrality. At top-SPS energy the detailed investigation of hadron production, now also extending to elliptic flow of Λ-baryons and to identified particle yields at high pt, shows that the created matter behaves in a similar manner as at RHIC energies. In the lower SPS energy range a distinct structure is observed in the energy dependence of the rate of strangeness production and in the slopes of pt-spectra suggesting the onset of the creation of a deconfined phase of matter.