Chandra X-ray Observatory

Astrophysics, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Galaxies, Galaxy Clusters, Ixpe (imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer), Marshall Astrophysics, Marshall Science Projects, Marshall Science Research & Projects, Marshall Space Flight Center, The Universe, X-ray Astronomy

NASA IXPE’s Longest Observation Solves Black Hole Jets Mystery

December 17, 2025

4 min read

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The Perseus Cluster. Left: Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE); Right: Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Two composite images show side-by-side observations of the Perseus Cluster from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer) and Chandra X-ray Observatory. Scientists used data from both observatories, along with data from Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, to confirm measurements of the galaxy cluster.

X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/SAO, (IXPE) NASA/MSFC; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk and K. Arcand

Written by Michael Allen

An international team of astronomers using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) has identified the origin of X-rays in a supermassive black hole’s jet, answering a question that has been unresolved since the earliest days of X-ray astronomy. Their findings are described in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, by the American Astronomical Society, Nov. 11.

The IXPE mission observed the Perseus Cluster, the brightest galaxy cluster i observable in X-rays, for more than 600 hours over a 60-day period between January and March. Not only is this IXPE’s longest observation of a single target to date, it also marks IXPE’s first time observing a galaxy cluster.

Specifically, the team of scientists studied the polarization properties of 3C 84, the massive active galaxy located at the very center of the Perseus Cluster. This active galaxy is a well-known X-ray source and a common target for X-ray astronomers because of its proximity and brightness.

Because the Perseus Cluster is so massive, it hosts an enormous reservoir of X-ray emitting gas as hot as the core of the Sun. The use of multiple X-ray telescopes, particularly the high-resolution imaging power of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory was essential to disentangle the signals in the IXPE data. Scientists combined these X-ray measurements with data from the agency’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

Fast facts

Polarization measurements from IXPE carry information about the orientation and alignment of emitted X-ray light waves. The more X-ray waves traveling in sync, the higher the degree of polarization.
X-rays from an active galaxy like 3C 84 are thought to originate from a process known as inverse Compton scattering, where light bounces off particles and gains energy. The polarization measurements from IXPE allow us to identify the presence of either inverse Compton scattering or other scenarios.
“Seed photons” is the term for the lower-energy radiation undergoing the energizing process of inverse Compton scattering.
You may remember the Perseus Cluster from this sonification replicating what a Black Hole sounds like from May 2022.

“While measuring the polarization of 3C 84 was one of the key science goals, we are still searching for additional polarization signals in this galaxy cluster that could be signatures of more exotic physics,” said Steven Ehlert, project scientist for IXPE and astronomer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

Chandra & IXPE composite image of the Perseus Cluster.

X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/SAO, (IXPE) NASA/MSFC; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk and K. Arcand

“We’ve already determined that for sources like 3C 84, the X-rays originated from inverse Compton scattering,” said Ioannis Liodakis, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics – FORTH in Heraklion, Greece, and lead author on the paper. “With IXPE observations of 3C 84 we had a unique chance to determine the properties of the seed photons.”

The first possible origin scenario for the seed photons is known as synchrotron self-Compton, where lower-energy radiation originates from the same jet that produces the highly energetic particles.

In the alternative scenario known as external Compton, seed photons originate from background radiation sources unrelated to the jet.

“The synchrotron self-Compton and external Compton scenarios have very different predictions for their X-ray polarization,” said Frederic Marin, an astrophysicist at the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory in France and co-author of the study. “Any detection of X-ray polarization from 3C 84 almost decisively rules out the possibility of external Compton as the emission mechanism.”

Throughout the 60-day observation campaign, optical and radio telescopes around the world turned their attention to 3C 84 to further test between the two scenarios.

NASA’s IXPE measured a net polarization of 4% in the X-rays spectrum, with comparable values measured in the optical and radio data. These results strongly favor the synchrotron self-Compton model for the seed photons, where they come from the same jet as the higher-energy particles.

“Separating these two components was essential to this measurement and could not be done by any single X-ray telescope, but by combining the IXPE polarization data with Chandra, NuSTAR, and Swift, we were able to confirm this polarization measurement was associated specifically with 3C 84,” said Sudip Chakraborty, a researcher at the Science and Technology Institute of the Universities Space Research Association in Huntsville, Alabama, and co-author on the paper.

Scientists will continue to analyze IXPE’s data from different locations in the Perseus Cluster for different signals.

More about IXPE

NASA’s IXPE, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. The IXPE mission is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, Inc., headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.

Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:

https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe

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Dec 16, 2025

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Source Link NASA IXPE’s Longest Observation Solves Black Hole Jets Mystery

Astrophysics, Black Holes, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes, Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research, Marshall Space Flight Center, The Universe

NASA’s Chandra Finds Small Galaxies May Buck the Black Hole Trend

December 12, 2025

NGC 6278 and PGC 039620 are two galaxies from a sample of 1,600 that were searched for the presence of supermassive black holes. These images represent the results of a study that suggests that smaller galaxies do not contain supermassive black holes nearly as often as larger galaxies do. The study analyzed over 1,600 galaxies that have been observed with Chandra over two decades. Certain X-ray signatures indicate the presence of supermassive black holes. The study indicates that most smaller galaxies like PGC 03620, shown here in both X-rays from Chandra and optical light images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, likely do not have supermassive black holes in their centers. In contrast, NGC 6278, which is roughly the same size as the Milky Way, and most other large galaxies in the sample show evidence for giant black holes within their cores.

X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F. Zou et al.; Optical: SDSS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Most smaller galaxies may not have supermassive black holes in their centers, according to a recent study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This contrasts with the common idea that nearly every galaxy has one of these giant black holes within their cores, as NASA leads the world in exploring how our universe works.

A team of astronomers used data from over 1,600 galaxies collected in more than two decades of the Chandra mission. The researchers looked at galaxies ranging in heft from over ten times the mass of the Milky Way down to dwarf galaxies, which have stellar masses less than a few percent of that of our home galaxy. A paper describing these results has been published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available here https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05252.

The team has reported that only about 30% of dwarf galaxies likely contain supermassive black holes.

“It’s important to get an accurate black hole head count in these smaller galaxies,” said Fan Zou of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led the study. “It’s more than just bookkeeping. Our study gives clues about how supermassive black holes are born. It also provides crucial hints about how often black hole signatures in dwarf galaxies can be found with new or future telescopes.”

As material falls onto black holes, it is heated by friction and produces X-rays. Many of the massive galaxies in the study contain bright X-ray sources in their centers, a clear signature of supermassive black holes in their centers. The team concluded that more than 90% of massive galaxies – including those with the mass of the Milky Way – contain supermassive black holes.

However, smaller galaxies in the study usually did not have these unambiguous black hole signals. Galaxies with masses less than three billion Suns – about the mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a close neighbor to the Milky Way – usually do not contain bright X-ray sources in their centers.

The researchers considered two possible explanations for this lack of X-ray sources. The first is that the fraction of galaxies containing massive black holes is much lower for these less massive galaxies. The second is the amount of X-rays produced by matter falling onto these black holes is so faint that Chandra cannot detect it.

“We think, based on our analysis of the Chandra data, that there really are fewer black holes in these smaller galaxies than in their larger counterparts,” said Elena Gallo, a co-author also from the University of Michigan.

To reach their conclusion, Zou and his colleagues considered both possibilities for the lack of X-ray sources in small galaxies in their large Chandra sample. The amount of gas falling onto a black hole determines how bright or faint they are in X-rays. Because smaller black holes are expected to pull in less gas than larger black holes, they should be fainter in X-rays and often not detectable. The researchers confirmed this expectation.

However, they found that an additional deficit of X-ray sources is seen in less massive galaxies beyond the expected decline from decreases in the amount of gas falling inwards. This additional deficit can be accounted for if many of the low-mass galaxies simply don’t have any black holes at their centers. The team’s conclusion was that the drop in X-ray detections in lower mass galaxies reflects a true decrease in the number of black holes located in these galaxies.

This result could have important implications for understanding how supermassive black holes form. There are two main ideas: In the first, a giant gas cloud directly collapses into a black hole, which contains thousands of times the Sun’s mass from the start. The other idea is that supermassive black holes instead come from much smaller black holes, created when massive stars collapse.

“The formation of big black holes is expected to be rarer, in the sense that it occurs preferentially in the most massive galaxies being formed, so that would explain why we don’t find black holes in all the smaller galaxies,” said co-author Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

This study supports the theory where giant black holes are born already weighing several thousand times the Sun’s mass. If the other idea were true, the researchers said they would have expected smaller galaxies to likely have the same fraction of black holes as larger ones.

This result also could have important implications for the rates of black hole mergers from the collisions of dwarf galaxies. A much lower number of black holes would result in fewer sources of gravitational waves to be detected in the future by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. The number of black holes tearing stars apart in dwarf galaxies will also be smaller.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

To learn more about Chandra, visit:

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Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

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Dec 11, 2025

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Painting Galaxy Clusters by Numbers (and Physics)

December 10, 2025

A new image-processing technique called “X-arithmetic” is allowing astronomers to analyze Chandra’s X-ray data and identify features in the gas of galaxy clusters and groups like never before. By comparing the outcome from the X-arithmetic technique to computer simulations, researchers can classify some of the largest structures in the universe by their nature rather than just their appearance. The researchers applied this technique to 15 galaxy clusters and groups, and this collection shows the central regions of five galaxy clusters in the sample: Abell 2052, Cygnus A, MS 0735+7421, the Perseus Cluster, and M87 in the Virgo Cluster.

X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Chicago/H. McCall

Galaxy clusters are the most massive objects in the universe held together by gravity, containing up to several thousand individual galaxies and huge reservoirs of superheated, X-ray-emitting gas. The mass of this hot gas is typically about five times higher than the total mass of all the galaxies in galaxy clusters. In addition to these visible components, 80% of the mass of galaxy clusters is supplied by dark matter. These cosmic giants are bellwethers not only for the galaxies, stars and black holes within them, but also for the evolution and growth of the universe itself.

It is no surprise then that NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has observed many galaxy clusters over the lifetime of the mission. Chandra’s X-ray vision allows it to see the enormous stockpiles of hot cluster gas, with temperatures as high as 100 million degrees, with exquisite clarity. This blazing gas tells stories about past and present activity within galaxy clusters.

Researchers applied the "X-arithmetic" technique to 15 galaxy clusters and groups. These are five astronomical images of galaxy clusters in the sample: Abell 2052, Cygnus A, MS 0735+7421, the Perseus Cluster, and M87 in the Virgo Cluster.

X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Chicago/H. McCall; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Many of these galaxy clusters host supermassive black holes at their centers, which periodically erupt in powerful outbursts. These explosions generate jets that are visible in radio wavelengths, which inflate bubbles full of energetic particles; these bubbles carry energy out into the surrounding gas. Chandra’s images have revealed a wealth of other structures formed during these black hole outbursts, including hooks, rings, arcs, and wings. However, appearances alone don’t tell us what these structures are or how they formed.

To tackle this problem, a team of astronomers developed a novel image-processing technique to analyze X-ray data, allowing them to identify features in the gas of galaxy clusters like never before, classifying them by their nature rather than just their appearance. Prior to this technique, which they call “X-arithmetic,” scientists could only identify the nature of some of the features and in a much less efficient way, via studies of the amounts of X-ray energy dispersed at different wavelengths. The authors applied X-arithmetic to 15 galaxy clusters and galaxy groups (these are similar to galaxy clusters but with fewer member galaxies). By comparing the outcome from the X-arithmetic technique to computer simulations, researchers now have a new tool that will help in understanding the physical processes inside these important titans of the universe.

A new paper looks at how these structures appear in different parts of the X-ray spectrum. By splitting Chandra data into lower-energy and higher-energy X-rays and comparing the strengths of each structure in both, researchers can classify them into three distinct types, which they have colored differently. A pink color is given to sound waves and weak shock fronts, which arise from pressure disturbances traveling at close to the speed of sound, compressing the hot gas into thin layers. The bubbles inflated by jets are colored yellow, and cooling or slower-moving gas is blue. The resulting images, “painted” to reflect the nature of each structure, offer a new way to interpret the complex aftermath of black hole activity using only X-ray imaging data. This method works not only on Chandra (and other X-ray) observations, but also on simulations of galaxy clusters, providing a tool to bridge data and theory.

The images in this new collection show the central regions of five galaxy clusters in the sample: MS 0735+7421, the Perseus Cluster, and M87 in the Virgo Cluster in the top row and Abell 2052 and Cygnus A on the bottom row. All of these objects have been released to the public before by the Chandra X-ray Center, but this is the first time this special technique has been applied. The new treatment highlights important differences between the galaxy clusters and galaxy groups in the study.

The galaxy clusters in the study often have large regions of cooling or slow-moving gas near their centers, and only some show evidence for shock fronts. The galaxy groups, on the other hand, are different. They show multiple shock fronts in their central regions and smaller amounts of cooling and slow-moving gas compared to the sample of galaxy clusters.

This contrast between galaxy clusters and galaxy groups suggests that black hole feedback — that is, the interdependent relationship between outbursts from a black hole and its environment — appears stronger in galaxy groups. This may be because feedback is more violent in the groups than in the clusters, or because a galaxy group has weaker gravity holding the structure together than a galaxy cluster. The same outburst from a black hole, with the same power level, can therefore more easily affect a galaxy group than a galaxy cluster.

There are still many open questions about these black hole outbursts. For example, scientists would like to know how much energy they put into the gas around them and how often they occur. These violent events play a key role in regulating the cooling of the hot gas and controlling the formation of stars in clusters. By revealing the physics underlying the structures they leave behind, the X-arithmetic technique brings us closer to understanding the influence of black holes on the largest scales.

A paper describing this new technique and its results has been published in The Astrophysical Journal and is led by Hannah McCall from the University of Chicago. The other authors are Irina Zhuravleva (University of Chicago), Eugene Churazov (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany), Congyao Zhang (University of Chicago), Bill Forman and Christine Jones (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), and Yuan Li (University of Massachusetts at Amherst).

To learn more about Chandra, visit:

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Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

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Megan Watzke
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617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
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Dec 09, 2025

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Astrophysics, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research, Goddard Space Flight Center, Stars, Supernova Remnants, Supernovae, The Universe, X-ray Astronomy, Xrism (x-ray Imaging And Spectroscopy Mission)

NASA-JAXA XRISM Finds Elemental Bounty in Supernova Remnant

December 5, 2025

4 min read

NASA-JAXA XRISM Finds Elemental Bounty in Supernova Remnant

For the first time, scientists have made a clear X-ray detection of chlorine and potassium in the wreckage of a star using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) spacecraft.

The Resolve instrument aboard XRISM, pronounced “crism,” discovered these elements in a supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A or Cas A, for short. The expanding cloud of debris is located about 11,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Cassiopeia.

“This discovery helps illustrate how the deaths of stars and life on Earth are fundamentally linked,” said Toshiki Sato, an astrophysicist at Meiji University in Tokyo. “Stars appear to shimmer quietly in the night sky, but they actively forge materials that form planets and enable life as we know it. Now, thanks to XRISM, we have a better idea of when and how stars might make crucial, yet harder-to-find, elements.”

A paper about the result published Dec. 4 in Nature Astronomy. Sato led the study with Kai Matsunaga and Hiroyuki Uchida, both at Kyoto University in Japan. JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) leads XRISM in collaboration with NASA, along with contributions from ESA (European Space Agency). NASA and JAXA also codeveloped the Resolve instrument.

The Cassiopeia A supernova remnant with the XRISM Resolve fields of view

Observations of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant by the Resolve instrument aboard the NASA-JAXA XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) spacecraft revealed strong evidence for potassium (green squares) in the southeast and northern parts of the remnant. Grids superposed on a multiwavelength image of the remnant represent the fields of view of two Resolve measurements made in December 2023. Each square represents one pixel of Resolve’s detector. Weaker evidence of potassium (yellow squares) in the west suggests that the original star may have had underlying asymmetries before it exploded.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/CalTech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand

Stars produce almost all the elements in the universe heavier than hydrogen and helium through nuclear reactions. Heat and pressure fuse lighter ones, like carbon, into progressively heavier ones, like neon, creating onion-like layers of materials in stellar interiors.

Nuclear reactions also take place during explosive events like supernovae, which occur when stars run out of fuel, collapse, and explode. Elemental abundances and locations in the wreckage can, respectively, tell scientists about the star and its explosion, even after hundreds or thousands of years.

Some elements — like oxygen, carbon, and neon — are more common than others and are easier to detect and trace back to a particular part of the star’s life.

Other elements — like chlorine and potassium — are more elusive. Since scientists have less data about them, it’s more difficult to model where in the star they formed. These rarer elements still play important roles in life on Earth. Potassium, for example, helps the cells and muscles in our bodies function, so astronomers are interested in tracing its cosmic origins.

The roughly circular Cas A supernova remnant spans about 10 light-years, is over 340 years old, and has a superdense neutron star at its center — the remains of the original star’s core. Scientists using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory had previously identified signatures of iron, silicon, sulfur, and other elements within Cas A.

In the hunt for other elements, the team used the Resolve instrument aboard XRISM to look at the remnant twice in December 2023. The researchers were able to pick out the signatures for chlorine and potassium, determining that the remnant contains ratios much higher than expected. Resolve also detected a possible indication of phosphorous, which was previously discovered in Cas A by infrared missions.

Watch to learn more about how the Resolve instrument aboard XRISM captures extraordinary data on the make-up of galaxy clusters, exploded stars, and more using only 36 pixels.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

“Resolve’s high resolution and sensitivity make these kinds of measurements possible,” said Brian Williams, the XRISM project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Combining XRISM’s capabilities with those of other missions allows scientists to detect and measure these rare elements that are so critical to the formation of life in the universe.”

The astronomers think stellar activity could have disrupted the layers of nuclear fusion inside the star before it exploded. That kind of upheaval might have led to persistent, large-scale churning of material inside the star that created conditions where chlorine and potassium formed in abundance.

The scientists also mapped the Resolve observations onto an image of Cas A captured by Chandra and showed that the elements were concentrated in the southeast and northern parts of the remnant.

This lopsided distribution may mean that the star itself had underlying asymmetries before it exploded, which Chandra data indicated earlier this year in a study Sato led.

“Being able to make measurements with good statistical precision of these rarer elements really helps us understand the nuclear fusion that goes on in stars before and during supernovae,” said co-author Paul Plucinsky, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We suspected a key part might be asymmetry, and now we have more evidence that’s the case. But there’s still a lot we just don’t understand about how stars explode and distribute all these elements across the cosmos.”

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Chandra X-ray Observatory, Galaxy Clusters, James Webb Space Telescope (jwst)

Mapping Dark Matter

November 17, 2025

Webb near-infrared data combined with Chandra X-ray data of the Bullet Cluster show many overlapping objects, including foreground stars, galaxies in galaxy clusters, and distorted background galaxies behind the galaxy clusters. The objects are all at various distances set against the black background of space. Most galaxies appear as tiny fuzzy ovals in white, orange, or red. A slightly larger, very bright, light blue spiral galaxy is at center. To its immediate left and right are two large bright pink splotches representing X-rays. The right pink area has a rounded nose facing right, where it is darker pink, and fades to the left as a triangular shape. This is referred to as the Bullet. To the far left and far right, next to the pink regions, are two blue regions representing dark matter mass. The left blue region is a large, long oval at an angle. The blue region at right is a far smaller oval.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC

This image released on June 30, 2025, combines data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to visualize dark matter. Researchers used Webb’s observations to carefully measure the mass of the galaxy clusters shown here as well as the collective light emitted by stars that are no longer bound to individual galaxies.

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Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC

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NASA IXPE’s Longest Observation Solves Black Hole Jets Mystery

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