NASA's X-Ray Telescopes Capture Mysterious 'Ghost Hand' In Space

NASA's Chandra and IXPE telescopes have revealed the complex magnetic field structure of the "hand"-shaped pulsar wind nebula MSH 15-52, providing new insights into how X-rays are polarized and how magnetic fields evolve in these extreme environments.

The "ghostly hand" was created by the death of a massive star. This catastrophic event, called a supernova explosion, left behind a fast-spinning, superdense stellar corpse known as a pulsar.

According to a statement from NASA, pulsars are spinning stars that have very strong magnetic fields. These magnetic fields create powerful jets of charged particles and a strong wind. This wind forms a cloud of gas and plasma called a pulsar wind nebula. The pulsar PSR B1509-58 is in the middle of the image, at the base of the "palm" of the pulsar wind nebula MSH 15-52. The pulsar releases particles into space, which create a glowing shape that looks like a human hand.

In 2001, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory first observed the pulsar PSR B1509-58 and revealed that its pulsar wind nebula (referred to as MSH 15-52) resembles a human hand. The pulsar is located at the base of the "palm" of the nebula. MSH 15-52 is located 16,000 light-years from Earth.

Now, NASA's newest X-ray telescope, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), has observed MSH 15-52 for about 17 days, the longest it has looked at any single object since it launched in December 2021.

"The IXPE data gives us the first map of the magnetic field in the 'hand'," said Roger Romani of Stanford University in California, who led the study. "The charged particles producing the X-rays travel along the magnetic field, determining the basic shape of the nebula, like the bones do in a person's hand."