Using NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft, astronomers have obtained their first view of the inner region around a dead white dwarf star that is vampirically feeding on a stellar companion.

The team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was able to perform a detailed study of the previously inaccessible highly energetic region immediately surrounding a white dwarf in the system EX Hydrae, located around 200 light-years from Earth.

The system is part of a class called an "intermediate polar," known for emitting a complex pattern of radiation, including X-rays. EX Hydrae comprises a white dwarf, the end stage of life for stars of similar masses to the sun, and its victim star, which completes an orbit of the dead star every 98 minutes. That makes EX H

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