The Jet of 3C 17 and the Use of Jet Curvature as a Diagnostic of the X-ray Emission Process

We report on the X-ray emission from the radio jet of 3C 17 from Chandra observations and compare the X-ray emission with radio maps from the VLA archive and with the optical–IR archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope. X-ray detections of two knots in the 3C 17 jet are found and both of these features have optical counterparts. We derive the spectral energy distribution for the knots in the jet and give source parameters required for the various X-ray emission models, finding that both inverse Compton (IC)/cosmic microwave background (CMB) and synchrotron are viable to explain the high energy emission. A curious optical feature (with no radio or X-ray counterparts) possibly associated with the 3C 17 jet is described. We also discuss the use of curved jets for the problem of identifying IC X-ray emission via scattering on CMB photons.