Such ordering can be studied by observing the magnetic susceptibility as a function of temperature and/or the size of the applied magnetic field, but a truly three-dimensional picture of the arrangement of the spins is best obtained by means of neutron diffraction. Neutrons are primarily scattered by the nuclei of the atoms in the structure. At a temperature above the ordering point of the magnetic moments, where the material behaves as a paramagnetic one, neutron diffraction will therefore give a picture of the crystallographic structure only. Below the ordering point, e.g. the Néel temperature of an antiferromagnet or the Curie-point of a ferromagnet the neutrons will also experience scattering from the magnetic moments because they themselves possess spin. The intensities of the Bragg reflections will therefore change. In fact in some cases entirely new Bragg-reflections will occur if the unit cell of the ordering is larger than that of the crystallographic structure. This is a form of superstructure formation. Thus the symmetry of the total structure may well differ from the crystallographic substructure. It needs to be described by one of the 1651 magnetic (Shubnikov) groups rather than one of the non-magnetic space groups.
Although ordinary X-ray diffraction is blind to the arrangement of the spins, it has become possible to use a special form of X-ray diffraction to study magnetic structure. If a wavelength is selected that is close to an absorption edge of one of elements contained in the materials the scattering becomes anomalous and this component to the scattering is (somewhat) sensitive to the non-spherical shape of the outer electrons of an atom with an unpaired spin. This means that this type of anomalous X-ray diffraction does contain information of the desired type.
More recently, table-top techniques are being developed which allow magnetic structures to be studied without recourse to neutron or synchrotron sources.