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J. Hester (Arizona State University)
CTB80 is a remarkable pulsar wind nebula seen as the pulsar is passing through the shell of its own supernova remnant. HST images taken in the light of [O III], [S II], and H\alpha show the structure of a complex bow shock with a radiative central component and two Balmer-dominated lobes. Continuum images show the presence of a small diffuse knot of emission offset approximately 0.5'' from the location of the radio pulsar along a line bisecting the lobes. We interpret the knot as synchrotron emission, and note that its luminosity and offset from the pulsar make it remarkably like the knot seen 0.5'' to the south east of the Crab pulsar. We propose that the structure of the bow shock in CTB 80 is the result of an axisymmetric bipolar pulsar wind, much like that seen in the Crab Nebula, in which polar jets from the pulsar are responsible for forming the lobes. Shear flow from the relativistic jets may be responsible for stripping the cooling and recombination layer off of the back side of the shocks in the lobes. We predict that X-ray images of CTB 80 will show the presence of both a strong equatorial wind and synchrotron jets along the axis defined by the pulsar, the knot, and the lobes.