Ping Zhou

North of the microquasar SS 433, an arc has emerged in the soft X-ray band. Faint and diffuse, yet stubbornly tracing contours already familiar from radio observations. Astronomers studied its spectrum and saw gas heated to eleven million kelvin. Gas that could not have been heated by the jets or the accretion disk wind.

In 1181, Chinese and Japanese astronomers recorded the appearance of a 'guest star', a bright object that shone for six months in the constellation Cassiopeia and then vanished. Today, that spot hosts Pa 30: a nebula with a hot central source ejecting material at 16,000 km/s.

The Einstein Probe space telescope detected a celestial storm: after a short (0.4-second) gamma-ray burst — a cosmic lightning bolt — came a long roll of X-ray thunder. It lasted nearly 10 minutes. This is the first direct proof that such explosions leave a lingering X-ray afterglow.

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.

At the center of the Milky Way, among dense clouds of gas and dust, lies a region called Sagittarius C. It's like a bustling crossroads: stars are born here, streams of matter collide, and the whole scene is illuminated by X-rays. For a long time, this glow remained a mystery.