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The three IXPE telescopes will try to reveal what is happening in the mysterious world of black holes and neutron stars. © naftemporiki.gr The three IXPE telescopes will try to reveal what is happening in the mysterious world of black holes and neutron stars.
NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission was launched Wednesday morning. A refrigerator the size of a refrigerator will incorporate three telescopes that will observe the two most dynamic and mysterious cosmic objects, black holes and neutron stars.

The three telescopes will study the polarization of X-rays emitted by the gases surrounding black holes and neutron stars. These gases are heated by their interaction with black holes and neutron stars, causing their temperature to reach even one million degrees Celsius. The study of the data collected by the mission telescopes will shed light both on the environment that exists around these objects and on some of the phenomena produced by their activity.

The mission will also study some more exotic objects and structures of the Universe. One of them is the Crab Nebula, which is about 6.5 thousand light-years from Earth. It is a cosmic cloud that is the remnant of a stellar explosion, a supernova. The stunning images captured from this nebula by the Hubble Space Telescope have been reproducing on a regular basis for many years, making the nebula well known inside and outside the scientific community. In fact, the Crab nebula will be the first to be observed by telescopes of the IXPE mission.

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