NASA’s IXPE Gets Fresh Look at Supernova

NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission has taken a new observation of a supernova, RCW 86, seen here in an image released on March 24, 2026. This observation helps fill in a fuller picture of what other telescopes have seen.

The full image combines IXPE's data with legacy observations from two other X-ray telescopes: NASA's Chandra and the ESA (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton telescope. The yellow represents low-energy X-rays, while blue shows high-energy X-rays detected by Chandra and XMM-Newton. The starfield in the image comes from the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab).

The release was published on March 26, 2026, and the linked mission material points to a longer scientific explanation behind the image.