Related papers: The Vela pulsar proper motion revisited with HST a…
The distance to the Vela pulsar (PSR B0833-45) has been traditionally assumed to be 500 pc. Although affected by a significant uncertainty, this value stuck to both the pulsar and the SNR. In an effort to obtain a model free distance…
The Vela pulsar is the brightest pulsar at radio wavelengths. It was the object that told us (via its glitching) that pulsars were solid rotating bodies not oscillating ones. Along with the Crab pulsar is it the source of many of the models…
We report the first successful measurement (with HST/WFPC2) of a significant proper motion for a V~ 25 object which we had proposed as the optical counterpart of the radio pulsar PSR B0656+14. The yearly displacement of 43+/- 2 mas is…
The first accurate measurements of Vela's proper motion were produced using the Parkes-Tidbinbilla Interferometer (PTI) (Bailes et al 1989). This 275 km baseline at 1.6 GHz gave a resolution of 140 mas and detected the proper motion and…
We have used a set of archived HST/WFPC2 exposures of the inner regions of the Crab Nebula to obtain a new measurement of the pulsar proper motion, the first after the original work of Wyckoff & Murray, more than 20 years ago. Our…
Polarisation measurements of pulsars offer an unique insight into the geometry of the emission regions in the neutron star magnetosphere. Therefore, they provide observational constraints on the different models proposed for the pulsar…
The quest for the distance of the Vela and Geminga pulsars yielded, so far, a set of four WFPC2 images for each object. The availability of couples of images taken at the same period of the year, thus affected by the same parallactic…
We report on the proper motion measurement of the proposed optical counterpart of the X-ray/radio pulsar PSR 1929+10. Using images obtained with the HST/STIS (average epoch 2001.73) we computed a yearly displacement of +97 +/- 1 mas yr^{-1}…
In this project, we have implemented our basic understanding of Pulsar Astronomy to calculate the Time Period of Vela Pulsar. Our choice of pulsar rests on the fact that it is the brightest object in the high-energy gamma-ray sky. The…
The pulsar velocity distribution provides information about the binary history of pulsar progenitors as well as asymmetries of the supernova events in which pulsars are born. Studies of local pulsars present a biased view of this…
We measure the absolute proper motion of Leo I using a WFPC2/HST data set that spans up to 10 years, to date the longest time baseline utilized for this satellite. The measurement relies on ~ 2300 Leo I stars located near the center of…
The study of the younger, and brighter, pulsars is important to understand the optical emission properties of isolated neutron stars. PSRB0540-69, the second brightest (V~22) optical pulsar, is obviously a very interesting target for these…
We have measured the proper motion of the candidate optical counterpart of the old, nearby pulsar PSR B1929+10, using a set of HST/STIS images collected in 2001, 7.2 years after the epoch of the original FOC detection (Pavlov et al. 1996).…
Multicolor photometry of the Vela pulsar (PSR B0833-45), updated by recent HST/WFPC2 observations obtained in the 555W, 675W and 814W filters, is presented. The available data provide the best characterization so far of the pulsar spectral…
Pulsar timing at the Mt Pleasant observatory has focused on Vela, which can be tracked for 18 hours of the day. These nearly continuous timing records extend over 24 years allowing a greater insight into details of timing noise, micro…
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars, sweeping the emission regions from the magnetic poles across our line of sight. Isolated neutron stars lose angular momentum through dipole radiation and (possibly) particle winds, hence they slow down…
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…
We report high angular resolution, multi-epoch radio observations of the young pulsar PSR B1800-21. Using two pairs of data sets, each pair spanning approximately a ten year period, we calculate the proper motion of the pulsar. We obtain a…
We have derived a new photographic photometry and proper motions for 20000 stars with completeness to V = 18 in the direction of galactic center at the intermediate latitude (l = 3 deg,b = 47 deg; alpha(1950)=15h 18m, delta(1950) = +02deg…
The proper motion of the faint (V=25.6 mag) neutron star RXJ1856.5-3754 as measured consistently with both the FORS1 optical imager on the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) as well as with the ROSAT High Resolution Imager is presented. With…