Credit: NASA/CXC/PSU/G.Pavlov et al.
A Counter Jet
The Vela Pulsar, a neutron star corpse left from a titanic stellar supernova explosion, shoots through space powered by a jet emitted from one of the neutron star's rotational poles. Now a counter jet in front of the neutron star has been imaged by the Chandra X-ray observatory. The Chandra image above shows the Vela Pulsar as a bright white spot in the middle of the picture, surrounded by hot gas shown in yellow and orange. The counter jet can be seen wiggling from the hot gas in the upper right. Chandra has been studying this jet so long that it's been able to create a movie of the jet's motion. The jet moves through space like a firehose, wiggling to the left and right and up and down, but staying collimated: the "hose" around the stream is, in this case, composed of a tightly bound magnetic field.
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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Monday, 26-Feb-2024 17:24:20 EST
