In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen’s groundbreaking discovery of X-rays led to their use in medical imaging , notably for visualizing bones in his wife’s hand. This marked the inception of a revolutionary diagnostic tool for the field of medicine. Fast forward to today, where two of NASA’s X-ray space telescopes have harnessed their imaging capabilities to unveil a remarkable hand-shaped structure in space, exposing the intricate magnetic field that serves as the “bones” of this celestial entity.
Working in tandem, these telescopes provide insights into the behavior of a deceased, collapsed star that continues to influence its surroundings by emitting streams of energized matter and antimatter. This discovery sheds light on the enduring impact of such cosmic phenomena. in medical imaging
Around 1,500 years ago, a giant star in our galaxy ran out of nuclear fuel to burn. When this happened, the star collapsed onto itself and formed an extremely dense object called a neutron star.
Rotating neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, or pulsars, provide laboratories for extreme physics, with conditions that cannot be replicated on Earth. Young pulsars can create jets of matter and antimatter moving away from the poles of the pulsar, along with an intense wind, forming a “pulsar wind nebula.”
In 2001, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory first observed the pulsar PSR B1509-58 and revealed that its pulsar wind nebula (referred to as MSH 15-52) resembles a human hand. The pulsar is located at the base of the “palm” of the nebula. MSH 15-52 is located 16,000 light-years from Earth.
Now, NASA’s newest X-ray telescope, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), has observed MSH 15-52 for about 17 days, the longest it has looked at any single object since it launched in December 2021.
“The IXPE data gives us the first map of the magnetic field in the ‘hand,'” said Roger Romani of Stanford University in California, who led the study. “The charged particles producing the X-rays travel along the magnetic field, determining the basic shape of the nebula, like the bones do in a person’s hand.”