Credit: Michela Rigoselli/Italian National Institute of Astrophysics
Who Ordered X-rays from a Magnetar Outburst?
Neutron stars are the compressed remnants left behind after some massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse, squashing the mass of the sun or more down to the a sphere with a diameter of a small city. Neutron stars are so dense a teaspoonful of neutron star material would be more massive than the entire population of earth. (Interestingly, the nuclei of the atoms that make up teaspoons and people have about the same density as a neutron star.) Many neutron stars have exceptionally strong magnetic fields, and a subset of neutron stars, called magnetars, have magnetic fields that are about a thousand times stronger than the typical neutron star. Magnetic fields this strong can rip apart the molecular bonds that hold your body together from a distance of 1000 kilometers. The energy stored in the magnetic field of a magnetar can produce extremely powerful bursts of energy. A good example was the magnetar SGR 1806-20, whose outburst partially ionized earth's upper atmosphere from a distance of 50,000 lightyears in 2004. Understanding how these outbursts are produced, and the effects they have on their host galaxies, is important. Now, for the first time, the polarization of the X-ray emission from a magnetar outburst has been measured by the Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer (IXPE for short). The image above, at left, shows an X-ray image of the magnetar, known as 1E 1841-045, which lies at the center of the supernova remnant called Kes 73, the hot blast wave produced by the explosion of a massive star that also left behind the magnetar. The inset shows an artist's illustration of the magnetar itself, with some imagined magnetic lines of force shown. Waves of X-ray radiation produced near the magnetar's magnetic pole are shown traversing interstellar space. Some of the waves are polarized, meaning that they oscillate in the same plane, and these polarized waves are finally measured by IXPE. IXPE shows that a large fraction of the observed X-rays produced by the outburst are polarized. The polarization measures suggest that the emission from the outburst is produced by electrons and other charged particles trapped within the magnetar's magnetic field.
Published: June 9, 2025
<
HEA Dictionary ● Archive
● Search HEAPOW
● Other Languages
● HEAPOW on Facebook
● Download all Images
● Education ● HEAD
>
Each week the HEASARC
brings you new, exciting and beautiful images from X-ray and Gamma ray
astronomy. Check back each week and be sure to check out the HEAPOW archive!
Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Monday, 09-Jun-2025 13:51:45 EDT