NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) team has been awarded the American Astronomical Society’s 2024 Bruno Rossi Prize in high-energy astronomy for helping “advance our understanding of particle acceleration and emission from astrophysical shocks, black holes and neutron stars.”
Researchers using data from NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer to study a microquasar – a distant black hole stripping a companion star of material – have published new findings about how cosmic-ray particles streaming away from the microquasar may be accelerated to nearly the speed of light.
Dec. 9 marks two years since the launch of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency mission to study polarized X-ray light – and the geometry and inner workings of the ultra-powerful energy sources from which it emanates.
NASA’s IXPE telescope has captured the first polarized X-ray imagery of the supernova remnant SN 1006, expanding our understanding of the relationship between magnetic fields and the energy streaming away from exploding stars.