difference between @Component and @Configuration in Spring 3

Question

I came across two annotations provided by Spring 3 (@Component and @Configuration) I am a bit confused between these.
Here is what I read about @Component

Answer 1

@Component is a generic stereotype annotation which can indicate any of the candidate components i.e; @Repository, @Service, @Controller and these candidates are eligible for auto-detection.

Where as @Configuration is used to create component which is used by spring framework to create the application context, internally @Configuration makes use of @Component it makes sense reason being even that's a spring component which the framework itself creates.