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NASA's newly launched X-ray space telescope is ready to start observing the cosmos - Space.com
Jan 11, 2022 1 min, 40 secs
— NASA's newest space observatory, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), is set to begin spying on some of the universe's most dramatic objects — black holes and neutron stars — potentially changing our understanding of the cosmos in the process. .

Related: Our X-Ray universe: Amazing photos by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

X-rays are a high-energy type of light that typically emanates from extremely energetic objects — like superheated jets spewing from black holes or the explosions of stars — and enables astronomers to study these events in a way they can't by using other wavelengths. .

To that end, NASA has launched a fleet of space-based observatories to peer inside cosmic sources like the gaseous nebulae where stars are born, and to probe the mysteries of black holes. .

One such observatory, called Chandra, launched in 1999 and is NASA's flagship X-ray space telescope.

Chandra works in tandem with two other NASA space observatories — the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope, which flies on the International Space Station, and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuStar) — as well as the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton to study the X-ray universe. !

But IXPE is about to look at the X-ray universe in a way that's rarely been done before: through the polarization of light. .

The IXPE satellite will provide astronomers with a new tool to probe the mysteries of the universe.

The refrigerator-sized satellite is equipped with three identical telescopes that will be able to study the polarization of light from cosmic sources such as black holes and superdense stellar corpses known as neutron stars.

With IXPE's observations, astronomers will be able to study the structure and mechanisms that power these types of enigmatic cosmic objects.

"The launch of IXPE marks a bold and unique step forward for X-ray astronomy," Weisskopf told Space.com before the launch.

"IXPE will tell us more about the precise nature of cosmic X-ray sources than we can learn by studying their brightness and color spectrum alone.".

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