{"id":208205,"date":"2025-03-09T14:15:05","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T19:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/einstein-probe-catches-x-ray-odd-couple"},"modified":"2025-03-09T14:15:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T19:15:05","slug":"einstein-probe-catches-x-ray-odd-couple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/einstein-probe-catches-x-ray-odd-couple","title":{"rendered":"Einstein Probe catches X-ray odd couple"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/einstein-probe-catches-x-ray-odd-couple.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique power of the mission to uncover fleeting X-ray sources in the sky.<\/p>\n<p>The odd celestial couple consists of a big, hot star, more than 10 times larger than our Sun, and a small compact white dwarf, with a mass similar to our star. Only a handful of these systems have been found so far. And this the first time scientists could track the X-ray light coming from such a curious pair from its initial sudden flare-up to its fading away.<\/p>\n<p>On 27 May 2024, the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) on Einstein Probe spotted X-rays coming from within our neighbour galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). To uncover the origin of this new celestial beacon, labelled EP J0052, scientists pointed Einstein Probes\u2019s Follow-up X-ray Telescope in that direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique power of the mission to uncover fleeting X-ray sources in the sky. The odd celestial couple consists of a big, hot star, more than [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}