NASA’s IXPE and White Dwarf Systems

Nasa’s Ixpe And White Dwarf Systems

January 8, 2026

Kamaraj IAS Academy

Prelims Plus

The News: NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer (IXPE) has probed the internal structure of EX Hydrae, a white dwarf binary system, for the first time. It revealed the height of "accreting columns" of gas to be nearly 2,000 miles.
Background Data:
White Dwarf: The dense core left after a star like our Sun exhausts its nuclear fuel. They are roughly the size of Earth but have the mass of the Sun.
Binary System: A system where two stars orbit each other. In this case, the white dwarf is "feeding" on gas from a companion star.
IXPE Mission: A joint mission between NASA and the Italian Space Agency. Unlike regular telescopes that see light intensity, IXPE measures polarization—the direction in which X-ray waves oscillate—to map magnetic fields and extreme gravity environments.
Understanding "Intermediate Polars" (white dwarfs with moderate magnetic fields) and the role of X-ray astronomy in studying high-energy physics.