Photograph of a 17th-century bursting star

NASA's Imaging X-ray Polymetry Explorer (IXPE) telescope sent its first image to Earth and this image shows the remains of a star that exploded in the 17th century.

The space observatory was launched on December 9, 2021 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The telescope set up its instruments last month and prepared to observe the supernova remnants of Casiopia A in a cluster of stars called Casiopia.

The remains of the giant temple star, located 11,000 years from Earth, were first seen in the 17th century. Its shock waves are removing the surrounding gas and heating it up. These rapid cosmic ray particles are producing bright light in X-ray light.

IXPE attached the Chandra X-ray telescope to study various aspects of the X-ray spectrum.

The Chandra X-ray Telescope is one of NASA's largest space observatories, launched in 1999.

IXPE, a joint effort of the US space agency NASA and the Italian space agency, is the first space observatory to study the polarization of X-rays coming from space objects such as stars and black holes.

This new image released by NASA on the occasion of Valentine's Day shows the IXPE data in a magenta ball with the data obtained from Ohar Chandra, which is shown in blue.