Researchers have discovered super heated matter around black hole Cygnus X-1 by using polarized X-rays. This data is being used to test and refine models that describe how black holes devour matter and then become some of the most luminous sources of light in the universe. This finding marks the first observations of a mass-accreting black hole from the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission.
Since no light can escape from inside the event horizon of a black hole, the X-rays detected by NASA’s X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) are emitted by hot matter or plasma in a 2,000-km diameter region surrounding the 60-km diameter event horizon of Cygnus X-1. By using data from IXPE, observations from NASA’s NICER and NuSTAR X-ray observatories, researchers were able to constrain the shape as well as location of the plasma. They found that this plasma extends perpendicular to a two-sided, pencil-shaped plasma outflow.
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The IXPE mission uses X-ray mirrors fabricated at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and focal plane instrumentation provided by a collaboration of ASI, the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics. Beyond Cygnus X-1, IXPE is being used to study a wide range of extreme X-ray sources, including mass accreting neutron stars, pulsars and pulsar wind nebulae, supernova remnants, our galactic center and active galactic nuclei. We’ve found a lot of surprises, and we’re having a lot of fun,” said Fabio Muleri, co-author of INAF-IAPS.
