Pulsar Astronomy: the HST Contribution
Abstract
HST observations have contributed significantly to our knowledge on the behaviour of Isolated Neutron Stars (INSs) as optical emitters. First, HST has been instrumental both to discover new optical counterparts (PSR B1055-52, PSR B1929+10, PSR B0950+08) and to confirm proposed identifications (PSR B0656+14). Second, HST multicolor photometry provided useful information to characterize the optical emission mechanism(s) at work in middle-aged INSs like PSR B0656+14 and Geminga. Last, but not least, the superior angular resolution of the HST allowed both to perform a very accurate morphological study of the plerionic environments of young pulsars (e.g. the Crab and PSR B0540-69) and to perform very accurate astrometric measurements yielding proper motions (Crab, Vela, Geminga, PSR B0656+14) and parallaxes (Geminga).
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0008523,
title = {Pulsar Astronomy: the HST Contribution},
author = {P. A. Caraveo and R. P. Mignani and G. G. Pavlov and G. F. Bignami},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0008523},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 1 figure, uses psfig.sty. To appear in the proceedings of A Decade of HST Science (Baltimore, USA, April 2000)