Deep X-ray survey reveals a pulsar shooting jets at near light-speed

Deep Chandra X-ray images of the pulsar wind nebula in CTA 1 reveal a dramatic jet structure extending from the pulsar, plus a perpendicular torus at the shock termination zone. Comparing observations from 2003 to now constrains the pulsar's motion to under 200 km/s. Modeling the jet and nebula across radio to gamma-ray wavelengths shows the pulsar accelerates electrons to 0.2–0.3 petaelectronvolts in a surprisingly weak magnetic field, marking CTA 1 as a young, efficient cosmic particle accelerator.