Happy Nice Mall

A brand new space telescope will soon reveal a hidden view of the cosmos, potentially changing our understanding of black holes, supernovas and even the nature of the universe.

No it is not That.

Much attention is paid this month to the James Webb Space Telescope, which will launch on December 22 from NASA and the European Space Agency. smaller, but also transformative, observatory.

NASA launched the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE mission, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1 a.m. East. The cost of the spacecraft is only 188 million dollars, Compared to James Webb’s huge budget 9.7 billion dollarsand is expected to demonstrate a new form of astronomy. For the first time, it will perform imaging X-ray polarimetry in orbit, a technique that could offer astronomers insights that no other telescope can achieve.

“It tells us about the strangest and most exciting objects in space,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate director of NASA’s science mission directorate.

IXPE (pronounced “ix-pee” by the mission team) was placed in orbit 340 miles above Earth after launch. The telescope will spend several weeks there to deploy its scientific instruments and test its equipment, after which it will begin its two-year mission.

X-rays are a useful way of observing the universe. Those emitted from highly energetic objects allow astronomers to study events — such as superheated jets or stellar explosions near black holes — in ways that other wavelengths, such as visible light, cannot. But X-rays can only be viewed from space, as they are mostly absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere.

In particular, NASA’s Chandra X-ray and ESA’s XMM-Newton observatories were both launched in 1999. With spacecraft like this, scientists have uncovered the birthplaces of gaseous stars. He mapped the spread of dark matter in galaxy clusters alongside nebulae and other pioneering work.

NS The use of imaging X-ray polarimetry sets the IXPE apart from its predecessors. If you’ve ever worn a pair of polarized sunglasses, you may know that they use thin slits to block horizontal light, but the side flip blocks vertical light. The same principle is used in X-ray polarimetry. Technical It will reveal the direction of incoming electric and magnetic fields, allowing astronomers to observe the direction of the wave-like motion of X-ray particles as they arrive. Armed with this data, astronomers can gather more information from the X-rays emitted by astrophysical events.

Rather than simply observing X-rays with a single instrument, the spacecraft is actually three separate telescopes, each containing 24 concentric mirrors, at the end of a 13-foot-long burst that will extend during the telescope’s first week in space.

As the X-rays come, they focused by each telescope to the three detectors at the end of the boom. Each of the detectors contains a 10 millimeter layer of helium and a gas called dimethyl ether or DME. This will reveal the polarization of the X-rays, which will leave a trace in the gas as they hit.

“These detectors will provide a snapshot of polarization,” said Elisabetta Cavazzuti, a program manager with the Italian Space Agency that designed the detectors.

Several attempts have been made to conduct X-ray polarimetry in space before, said Martin Weisskopf, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. In 1971 Dr. Weisskopf was involved in a successful experimental mission that performed short X-ray polarization observations over the Crab nebula in our galaxy using a sounding rocket that went directly up and down but not in orbit. Dr. According to Weisskopf, an attempt to launch a more advanced polarimeter on the Soviet Spectrum-X spacecraft in the 1990s was interrupted by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We’ve been waiting a long time to have a polarimetry mission,” he said.

The patience of her and other researchers, NASA’s in 2017 selected IXPE As part of the Little Explorers program.

Within two years of launch, the IXPE spacecraft will observe more than 100 cosmic targets, including black holes, supernovas and exotic stars.

One purpose of the telescope is to observe the spin of relatively small black holes that are about 10 times the mass of our sun. X-ray polarimetry would be able to investigate relativistic effects occurring very close to these black holes, where the polarization angle of the escaping X-ray photons is expected to change as they travel through greatly distorted space-time. rotation of the black hole.

“This is the first time we can try and measure these distortions,” said Adam Ingram, a lecturer in astrophysics at Newcastle University in England.

IXPE will also search for neutron stars, the cores left behind after giant stars collapse. Scientists are particularly interested in pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutron stars, and highly magnetized magnetars.

By focusing on magnetars, the researchers hope to see how robust the laws of physics are. It will be able to probe an impact near these stars, called IXPE. quantum electrodynamicsor QED, extremely strong magnetic fields must cause a high degree of polarization in the emitted X-ray particles.

“QED is fundamental to our understanding of physics,” said researcher Ilaria Caiazzo of the California Institute of Technology. “If we found out it wasn’t true, that would really radically change everything. I hope we will confirm this effect.”

Elsewhere, IXPE can tell us more about the moments after a star explodes, a supernova. The spacecraft’s data will reveal how material ejected from a supernova interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium as it enters at extreme speeds, creating a shock front. Electrons can then travel back and forth across the shock front, a process known as propagation shock acceleration.

Dr. “This is a very important process in astronomy, but we don’t fully understand the details,” Ingram said. “It is thought to be behind why supernova remnants are so bright.”

IXPE’s primary mission is expected to last two years. However, Dr. Weisskopf said that if NASA extends the mission, the spacecraft could last for about two decades. With more time, astronomers could study other targets like Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. By looking for reflections of X-rays on gas clouds near the black hole, they can look for evidence of increased activity of Sagittarius A* over the past few centuries.

Dr. “If the black hole hadn’t been brighter a few hundred years ago, the clouds wouldn’t have been as bright as they appeared,” Weisskopf said. “You can calculate how long it takes for X-rays to come to the cloud and bounce back towards us. It’s a very difficult experiment.”

Compared to super telescopes like James Webb, the IXPE may be relatively modest. But it highlights the breadth of astronomy that scientists are currently undertaking, and new ways in which advanced machines are used to explore our universe.

X-ray polarimetry, once a closed window in the cosmos, opens – and with it, a host of hidden secrets will be unraveled.

Dr. “This is really a new way of looking at the sky,” Zurbuchen said.