This cosmic 'lighthouse' is blazing a magnetic trail through the Milky Way

Astronomers have, for the first time, directly mapped the magnetic field surrounding an unusual "lighthouse" pulsar, revealing an invisible cosmic highway that channels particles blasted from the rapidly spinning stellar remnant.Using NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission, researchers measured the magnetic field around the pulsar PSR J1101−6101 — nicknamed the "Lighthouse"— and confirmed a long-standing prediction that its high-energy particles stream along m