India, Nov. 20 -- Now, MIT astronomers have used an X-ray telescope in space to identify key features in the system's innermost region - an extremely energetic environment that has been inaccessible to most telescopes until now. In an open-access studypublished in theAstrophysical Journal, the team reports using NASA'sImaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) to observe the intermediate polar, known as EX Hydrae.
The team found a surprisingly high degree of X-ray polarization, which describes the direction of an X-ray wave's electric field, as well as an unexpected direction of polarization in the X-rays coming from EX Hydrae. From these measurements, the researchers traced the X-rays back to their source in the system's innermost region, ...