English

Proper Motion of the Crab Pulsar Revisited

Astrophysics 2009-11-11 v1

Abstract

It has been suggested that the Crab pulsar's proper motion is well aligned with the symmetry axis of the pulsar wind nebula. We have re-visited this question, examining over 6 years of F547M WFPC2 chip 3 images to obtain a best-fit value of μ=14.9±0.8\mu_\ast = 14.9 \pm 0.8mas/yr at PA 278\arcdeg±3\arcdeg278\arcdeg \pm 3\arcdeg. At 26\arcdeg±3\arcdeg26\arcdeg\pm 3\arcdeg to the nebula axis, this substantially relaxes constraints on the birth kick of this pulsar. Such misalignment allows the momentum to be imparted over \sim1s timescales.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0602255,
  title  = {Proper Motion of the Crab Pulsar Revisited},
  author = {C. -Y. Ng and Roger W. Romani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0602255},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ