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NASA’s IXPE Helps Researchers Determine Shape of Black Hole Corona
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
An international team of astronomers has uncovered new evidence to explain how pulsing remnants of exploded stars interact with surrounding matter deep in the cosmos, using observations from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) and other telescopes.
Scientists based in the U.S., Italy, and Spain, set their sights on a mysterious cosmic duo called PSR J1023+0038, or J1023 for short. The J1023 system is comprised of a rapidly rotating neutron star feeding off of its low-mass companion star, which has created an accretion disk around the neutron star. This neutron star is also a pulsar, emitting powerful twin beams of light from its opposing magnetic poles as it rotates, spinning like a lighthouse beacon.
The J1023 system is rare and valuable to study because the pulsar transitions clearly between its active state, in which it feeds off its companion star, and a more dormant state, when it emits detectable pulsations as radio waves. This makes it a “transitional millisecond pulsar.”
An artist’s illustration depicting the central regions of the binary system PSR J1023+0038, including the pulsar, the inner accretion disc and the pulsar wind. Credit: Marco Maria Messa, University of Milan/INAF-OAB; Maria Cristina Baglio, INAF-OAB “Transitional millisecond pulsars are cosmic laboratories, helping us understand how neutron stars evolve in binary systems,” said researcher Maria Cristina Baglio of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) Brera Observatory in Merate, Italy, and lead author of a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters illustrating the new findings.
The big question for scientists about this pulsar system was: Where do the X-rays originate? The answer would inform broader theories about particle acceleration, accretion physics, and the environments surrounding neutron stars across the universe.
The source surprised them: The X-rays came from the pulsar wind, a chaotic stew of gases, shock waves, magnetic fields, and particles accelerated near the speed of light, that hits the accretion disk.
To determine this, astronomers needed to measure the angle of polarization in both X-ray and optical light. Polarization is a measure of how organized light waves are. They looked at X-ray polarization with IXPE, the only telescope capable of making this measurement in space, and comparing it with optical polarization from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. IXPE launched in Dec. 2021 and has made many observations of pulsars, but J1023 was the first system of its kind that it explored.
NASA’s NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory provided valuable observations of the system in high-energy light. Other telescopes contributing data included the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in Magdalena, New Mexico.
The result: scientists found the same angle of polarization across the different wavelengths.
“That finding is compelling evidence that a single, coherent physical mechanism underpins the light we observe,” said Francesco Coti Zelati of the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, co-lead author of the findings.
This interpretation challenges the conventional wisdom about neutron star emissions of radiation in binary systems, the researchers said. Previous models had indicated that the X-rays come from the accretion disk, but this new study shows they originate with the pulsar wind.
“IXPE has observed many isolated pulsars and found that the pulsar wind powers the X-rays,” said NASA Marshall astrophysicist Philip Kaaret, principal investigator for IXPE at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “These new observations show that the pulsar wind powers most of the energy output of the system.”
Astronomers continue to study transitional millisecond pulsars, assessing how observed physical mechanisms compare with those of other pulsars and pulsar wind nebulae. Insights from these observations could help refine theoretical models describing how pulsar winds generate radiation – and bring researchers one step closer, Baglio and Coti Zelati agreed, to fully understanding the physical mechanisms at work in these extraordinary cosmic systems.
More about IXPE
IXPE, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, Inc., headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe
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Last Updated Jul 15, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayContactCorinne M. Beckingercorinne.m.beckinger@nasa.govLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) Marshall Astrophysics Marshall Science Research & Projects Marshall Space Flight Center Explore More
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4568-4569: A Close Look at the Altadena Drill Hole and Tailings
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the “Altadena” drill hole using its Mast Camera (Mastcam) on June 8, 2025 — Sol 4564, or Martian day 4,564 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 13:57:45 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Written by Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Earth planning date: Wednesday, June 11, 2025
As we near the end of our Altadena drill campaign, Curiosity continued her exploration of the Martian bedrock within the boxwork structures on Mount Sharp. After successfully delivering a powdered rock sample to both the CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy) and SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instruments, the focus for sols 4568 and 4569 was to take a closer look at the drill hole itself — specifically, the interior walls of the drill hole and the associated tailings (the rock material pushed out by the drill).
In the image above, you can see that the tone (or color) of the rock exposed within the wall of the drill hole appears to change slightly with depth, and the drill tailings are a mixture of fine powder and more solid clumps. If you compare the Altadena drill site with the 42 drill sites that came before, one can really appreciate the impressive range of colors, textures, and grain sizes in the rocks that Curiosity has analyzed over the past 12 years. Every drill hole marks a window into the past and can help us understand how the ancient environment and climate on Mars evolved over time.
In this two-sol plan, the ChemCam, Mastcam, APXS, and MAHLI instruments coordinated their observations to image and characterize the chemistry of the wall of the drill hole and tailings before we drive away from this site over the coming weekend. Outside of our immediate workspace, Mastcam created two stereo mosaics that will image the boxwork structures nearby as well as the layers within Texoli butte. ChemCam assembled three long-distance RMI images that will help assess the layers at the base of the “Mishe Mokwa” hill, complete the imaging of the nearby boxwork structures, and image the very distant crater rim (about 90 kilometers, or 56 miles away) and sky to investigate the scattering properties of the atmosphere. The environmental theme group included observations that will measure the properties of the atmosphere and also included a dust-devil survey.
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Last Updated Jun 13, 2025 Related Terms
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The photograph was captured by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover on Sol 3551 (August 2, 2022, at 20:43:28 UTC).
What stands out in the image are two objects, that appear strikingly out of place amid the natural Martian landscape of rocks and boulders. Their sharp edges, right angles, flat surfaces, and geometric symmetry suggest they may have been shaped by advanced cutting tools rather than natural erosion.
Could these ancient remnants be part of a destroyed structure or sculpture? If so, they may serve as yet another piece of evidence pointing to the possibility that Mars was once home to an intelligent civilization, perhaps even the advanced humanoid beings who, according to some theories, fled the catastrophic destruction of planet Maldek and sought refuge on the Red Planet.
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By NASA
A black hole has blasted out a surprisingly powerful jet in the distant universe, according to a study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/J. Maithil et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk A black hole has blasted out a surprisingly powerful jet in the distant universe, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and discussed in our latest press release. This jet exists early enough in the cosmos that it is being illuminated by the leftover glow from the big bang itself.
Astronomers used Chandra and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to study this black hole and its jet at a period they call “cosmic noon,” which occurred about three billion years after the universe began. During this time most galaxies and supermassive black holes were growing faster than at any other time during the history of the universe.
The main graphic is an artist’s illustration showing material in a disk that is falling towards a supermassive black hole. A jet is blasting away from the black hole towards the upper right, as Chandra detected in the new study. The black hole is located 11.6 billion light-years from Earth when the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the leftover glow from the big bang, was much denser than it is now. As the electrons in the jets fly away from the black hole, they move through the sea of CMB radiation and collide with microwave photons. These collisions boost the energy of the photons up into the X-ray band (purple and white), allowing them to be detected by Chandra even at this great distance, which is shown in the inset.
Researchers, in fact, identified and then confirmed the existence of two different black holes with jets over 300,000 light-years long. The two black holes are 11.6 billion and 11.7 billion light-years away from Earth, respectively. Particles in one jet are moving at between 95% and 99% of the speed of light (called J1405+0415) and in the other at between 92% and 98% of the speed of light (J1610+1811). The jet from J1610+1811 is remarkably powerful, carrying roughly half as much energy as the intense light from hot gas orbiting the black hole.
The team was able to detect these jets despite their great distances and small separation from the bright, growing supermassive black holes — known as “quasars” — because of Chandra’s sharp X-ray vision, and because the CMB was much denser then than it is now, enhancing the energy boost described above.
When quasar jets approach the speed of light, Einstein’s theory of special relativity creates a dramatic brightening effect. Jets aimed toward Earth appear much brighter than those pointed away. The same brightness astronomers observe can come from vastly different combinations of speed and viewing angle. A jet racing at near-light speed but angled away from us can appear just as bright as a slower jet pointed directly at Earth.
The researchers developed a novel statistical method that finally cracked this challenge of separating effects of speed and of viewing angle. Their approach recognizes a fundamental bias: astronomers are more likely to discover jets pointed toward Earth simply because relativistic effects make them appear brightest. They incorporated this bias using a modified probability distribution, which accounts for how jets oriented at different angles are detected in surveys.
Their method works by first using the physics of how jet particles scatter the CMB to determine the relationship between jet speed and viewing angle. Then, instead of assuming all angles are equally likely, they apply the relativistic selection effect: jets beamed toward us (smaller angles) are overrepresented in our catalogs. By running ten thousand simulations that match this biased distribution to their physical model, they could finally determine the most probable viewing angles: about 9 degrees for J1405+0415 and 11 degrees for J1610+1811.
These results were presented by Jaya Maithil (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian) at the 246th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Anchorage, AK, and are also being published in The Astrophysical Journal. A preprint is available here. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release is supported by an artist’s illustration of a jet blasting away from a supermassive black hole.
The black hole sits near the center of the illustration. It resembles a black marble with a fine yellow outline. Surrounding the black hole is a swirling disk, resembling a dinner plate tilted to face our upper right. This disk comprises concentric rings of fiery swirls, dark orange near the outer edge, and bright yellow near the core.
Shooting out of the black hole are two streaky beams of silver and pale violet. One bright beam shoots up toward our upper right, and a second somewhat dimmer beam shoots in the opposite direction, down toward our lower left. These beams are encircled by long, fine, corkscrewing lines that resemble stretched springs.
This black hole is located 11.6 billion light-years from Earth, much earlier in the history of the universe. Near this black hole, the leftover glow from the big bang, known as the cosmic microwave background or CMB, is much denser than it is now. As the electrons in the jets blast away from the black hole, they move through the sea of CMB radiation. The electrons boost the energies of the CMB light into the X-ray band, allowing the jets to be detected by Chandra, even at this great distance.
Inset at our upper righthand corner is an X-ray image depicting this interaction. Here, a bright white circle is ringed with a band of glowing purple energy. The jet is the faint purple line shooting off that ring, aimed toward our upper right, with a blob of purple energy at its tip.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
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Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
What happens when the universe’s most magnetic object shines with the power of 1000 Suns in a matter of seconds? Thanks to NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer), a mission in collaboration with ASI (Italian Space Agency), scientists are one step closer to understanding this extreme event.
Magnetars are a type of young neutron star – a stellar remnant formed when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses in on itself, leaving behind a dense core roughly the mass of the Sun, but squashed down to the size of a city. Neutron stars display some of the most extreme physics in the observable universe and present unique opportunities to study conditions that would otherwise be impossible to replicate in a laboratory on Earth.
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Illustrated magnetar flyby sequence showing magnetic field lines. A magnetar is a type of isolated neutron star, the crushed, city-size remains of a star many times more massive than our Sun. Their magnetic fields can be 10 trillion times stronger than a refrigerator magnet's and up to a thousand times stronger than a typical neutron star's. This represents an enormous storehouse of energy that astronomers suspect powers magnetar outbursts.NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA) The magnetar 1E 1841-045, located in the remnants of a supernova (SNR Kes 73) nearly 28,000 light-years from Earth, was observed to be in a state of outburst by NASA’s Swift, Fermi, and NICER telescopes on August 21, 2024.
A few times a year, the IXPE team approves requests to interrupt the telescope’s scheduled observations to instead focus on unique and unexpected celestial events. When magnetar 1E 1841-045 entered this brighter, active state, scientists decided to redirect IXPE to obtain the first-ever polarization measurements of a flaring magnetar.
Magnetars have magnetic fields several thousand times stronger than most neutron stars and host the strongest magnetic fields of any known object in the universe. Disturbances to their extreme magnetic fields can cause a magnetar to release up to a thousand times more X-ray energy than it normally would for several weeks. This enhanced state is called an outburst, but the mechanisms behind them are still not well understood.
Through IXPE’s X-ray polarization measurements, scientists may be able to get closer to uncovering the mysteries of these events. Polarization carries information about the orientation and alignment of the emitted X-ray light waves; the higher the degree of polarization, the more the X-ray waves are traveling in sync, akin to a tightly choreographed dance performance. Examining the polarization characteristics of magnetars reveals clues about the energetic processes producing the observed photons as well as the direction and geometry of the magnetar magnetic fields.
The IXPE results, aided by observations from NASA’s NuSTAR and NICER telescopes, show that the X-ray emissions from 1E 1841-045 become more polarized at higher energy levels while still maintaining the same direction of propagation. A significant contribution to this high polarization degree comes from the hard X-ray tail of 1E 1841-045, an energetic magnetospheric component dominating the highest photon energies observed by IXPE. “Hard X-rays” refer to X-rays with shorter wavelengths and higher energies than “soft X-rays.” Although prevalent in magnetars, the mechanics driving the production of these high energy X-ray photons are still largely unknown. Several theories have been proposed to explain this emission, but now the high polarization associated with these hard X-rays provide further clues into their origin.
This illustration depicts IXPE’s measurements of X-ray polarization emitting from magnetar 1E 1841-045 located within the Supernova Remnant Kes 73. At the time of observation, the magnetar was in a state of outburst and emitting the luminosity equivalent to 1000 suns. By studying the X-ray polarization of magnetars experiencing an outburst scientists may be able to get closer to uncovering the mysteries of these events. Michela Rigoselli/Italian National Institute of Astrophysics The results are presented in two papers published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, one led by Rachael Stewart, a PhD student at George Washington University, and the other by Michela Rigoselli of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics..
“This unique observation will help advance the existing models aiming to explain magnetar hard X-ray emission by requiring them to account for this very high level of synchronization we see among these hard X-ray photons,” said Stewart. “This really showcases the power of polarization measurements in constraining physics in the extreme environments of magnetars.”
Rigoselli, lead author of the companion paper, added, “It will be interesting to observe 1E 1841-045 once it has returned to its quiescent, baseline state to follow the evolution of its polarimetric properties.”
IXPE is a space observatory built to discover the secrets of some of the most extreme objects in the universe. Launched in December 2021 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on a Falcon 9 rocket, the IXPE mission is part of NASA’s Small Explorer series.
IXPE, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.
Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe
Media Contact
Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters
elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov
202-358-0845
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
256.544.0034
About the Author
Beth Ridgeway
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Last Updated Jun 05, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayContactLane FigueroaElizabeth R. Landauelizabeth.r.landau@nasa.govLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Marshall Astrophysics Marshall Science Research & Projects Marshall Space Flight Center The Universe Explore More
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