Patrick Slane

The edge of the supernova remnant RCW 86 is where the shock wave from a star's explosion slams into the surrounding gas. The IXPE telescope looked at the southwestern part of this boundary in X-rays and tried to catch polarization — the way these rays oscillate.

Deep in space, a rapidly spinning neutron star, a pulsar nicknamed the Lighthouse, speeds through tenuous gas. Like a motorboat cutting through water, it leaves a glowing trail of charged particles behind. In X-rays, this trail appears as a bright tail and a thin filament stretching over many light-years.