The American Space Agency, NASA, has released the first scientific images taken by the new Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), released on December 9, 2021. The spacecraft studies polarized X-rays from various extreme and mysterious cosmic sources.
In December 2021, NASA launched an IXPE space telescope. The spacecraft calibrated its instruments for a month and adapted to the space environment. When it was ready to collect data, mission leaders directed their mirrors to a supernova called Cassiopeia A – the remnant of a vibrating gas cloud from a star that exploded in the 17th century. writes Business Insider.
NASA’s new X-ray space telescope has taken its first shot showing the vivid electromagnetic afterglow of a supernova explosion.
The first picture was released on Monday. The gas cloud is about ten light-years wide. It doesn’t really glow in the stunning purple color depicted above. NASA researchers have chosen this color to show how strong the X-ray light is in different parts of the cloud.
Our #IXPE observatory sent back its first science image: Cassiopeia A—the remains of a star that exploded 11,000 light-years from Earth.
The supernova remnant is seen here in X-ray data from IXPE and @ChandraXray: https://t.co/Y9R8RPv2Pa pic.twitter.com/f0nj4BIEvn
– NASA (@NASA) February 14, 2022
In the image below, a wider range of colors was used to show the differences in X-rays.
(Photo by NASA)–
The beautiful remains of the Cassiopeia A supernova are about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Light from the supernova first reached Earth in the 1670s.
IXPE is a joint mission of NASA and the Italian Space Agency to study high-energy space objects, including black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, supernova remnants, magnets, quasars, and galaxy clusters by observation with polarized X-rays. writes in a statement to NASA.
Cassiopeia A is the first of about 40 objects that IXPE is studying in its first year. In addition to exploring supernovae, the mission can answer questions about objects such as black holes, including how they rotate and whether the black hole in the center of our Milky Way has ever been nourished by surrounding materials.
IXPE is planned to spend at least two years studying the most extreme and mysterious objects in the universe. This is NASA’s first major X-ray space telescope since the Chandra X-ray took to orbit. Chandra set off in 1999 and targeted Cassiopeia At, revealing the presence of a black hole or a neutron star in the middle of the supernova remnant. The first recording of the telescope also captured Cassiopeia At.
„Cassiopeia The image of IXPE is as historical as Chandra’s image of the same supernova remnant. This shows that IXPE has access to new, unprecedented information about Cassiopeia A, which is currently under analysis.Said Martin C. Weisskopf, NASA’s IXPE team leader in a press release.
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