X rays peer inside a magnet: Submicron spin textures in bulk magnetic materials have been stubbornly hard to detect.

The article reports on an x-ray tomographic technique developed by Claire Donnelly and Laura Heyderman and their colleagues which offers a finer view of 3D magnetization structures. Topics include vortices and magnetic structures, the combination of ptychography and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism, and emergence of new magnetic technologies with better performance. The relationship between magnetic structure and materials structure is discussed.