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    A white dwarf’s cosmic feeding frenzy revealed by NASA

    January 11, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist’s concept depicts a smaller white dwarf star pulling material from a larger star, right, into an accretion disk. Earlier this year, scientists used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer) to study a white dwarf star and its X-ray polarization.
    MIT/Jose-Luis Olivares

    Using NASA’s IXPE, astronomers captured an unprecedented view of a white dwarf star actively feeding on material from a companion. The data revealed giant columns of ultra-hot gas shaped by the star’s magnetic field and glowing in intense X-rays. These features are far too small to image directly, but X-ray polarization allowed scientists to map them with surprising precision. The results open new doors for understanding extreme binary star systems.

    Scientists have, for the first time, used N...

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    Our Galaxy’s Black Hole Not as Sleepy as thought

    June 26, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The first ever image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that sit at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy
    The first ever image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that sit at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

    The supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is not as dormant as had been thought, a new study shows.

    The slumbering giant woke up around 200 years ago to gobble up some nearby cosmic objects before going back to sleep, according to the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

    NASA’s IXPE space observatory spotted an Xray echo of this powerful resurgence of activity, the researchers said.

    The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A—abbreviated to Sgr A—is four million times more massive than the Sun. It sits 27,000 light years from Earth at the center of the Milky Way’s spiral.

    Last year astronomers revealed the first...

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