"NASA's X-ray Telescopes Unveil Secrets of Ghostly Cosmic Hand and Historic Supernova Remnant"

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) have combined their imaging powers to reveal the magnetic field "bones" of a hand-shaped structure in space known as MSH 15-52, a pulsar wind nebula located 16,000 light-years from Earth. The IXPE data provides the first map of the magnetic field in the nebula, showing that regions with high polarization have straight and uniform magnetic fields, while turbulent regions exhibit low polarization. These findings shed light on the behavior of particles and antimatter around pulsars, providing insights into how pulsars can act as particle accelerators. Similar magnetic fields have also been detected in the Vela and Crab pulsar wind nebulae, suggesting their prevalence in these objects.