Neutron star spotted moving 5 million mph, trailing particle jet

NASA/CXC/ISDC

Yesterday, the people who run NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory announced that they had imaged the longest particle jet yet seen in the Milky Way. The jet, seen in the lower right in the image above, has reached this length because its source, a neutron star known as IGR J11014-6103, also happens to be one of the fastest moving neutron stars ever spotted, possibly traveling as fast as eight million kilometers an hour.

Neutron stars are formed in supernova explosions, which are typically symmetrical. As a result, many of them never leave the supernova remnant in which they form. In some cases, however, asymmetries in the explosion give the neutron star a nudge and send it traveling from the site where the exploding star sat. In the case of IGR J11014-6103, the nudge was anything but gentle; preliminary estimates of its speed place it at between four and eight million kilometers an hour, making it one of the fastest moving neutron stars ever spotted.

But the new observations show that, in addition to its high speed, the neutron star has a feature that's less unusual: high-energy particle jets that mark it as a pulsar. In this case, the jets appear to be emitted in a direction that's perpendicular to the neutron star's motion, making them tail off at an angle. In addition, kinks in the jets suggest that the axis of rotation of the neutron star has a significant wobble in it.