Topic
The study of X-rays from cosmic sources like black holes, neutron stars, and hot gas, using space telescopes such as Chandra, XRISM, and Einstein Probe.
Einstein Probe saw a likely neutron star merger shine in soft X-rays for nearly 10 minutes after a 0.4-second gamma-ray burst. Its team argues gamma-ray detectors alone may have missed this phase in earlier mergers, a case that so far rests on one event.
Reality
Mayura Balakrishnan and colleagues separated three overlapping X-ray sources in Chandra data to make the first uncontaminated maps of Sgr A East. The cleaner signal gives a baseline for testing whether the remnant has heated the gas around the Milky Way's central black hole.
Reality
XRISM spectra show wind plasma from the hypergiant Wray 977 falling onto the pulsar GX 301-2 during an X-ray flare, a first for any compact object. The spectra back a cause astronomers had long inferred from orbital timing, though so far they cover a single observing window.
Reality
The 84 detections came out of public Chandra data on six galaxies with no new observing time, and the class is defined by a spectral shape that co-author Jimmy Irwin thinks may cover three different kinds of stellar remnant.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
A 16-hour look at the binary caught iron absorption lines sitting below their laboratory energies, and the team takes that shift as gas already on its way onto the neutron star. Rahin says nothing comparable is in the literature.
Reality
Three stacked passes over the whole sky produced the largest public X-ray source catalog to date. Most of what it found lies outside the Milky Way, and the consortium says X-ray detection is only the first step.
Reality
A 21-million-Kelvin halo at redshift 3.25 already holds a mature cluster's share of normal matter, before the epoch when such gas was expected to start warming.
Reality