No Arabic abstract
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). The yearly displacement, mu=107.3+/-1 mas/yr along a position angle of 64.6+/-0.6 deg, is fully consistent with the most recent VLBA radio measurement. This result provides a robust confirmation of the identification of PSR B1929+10 in the optical band.
We present a detailed single-pulse analysis for PSR B1929+10 based on observations with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The main pulse and interpulse are found to be modulated with a periodicity of $sim12$ times the pulsars rotational period ($P$). The $sim12P$ modulation is confirmed as a periodic amplitude modulation instead of systematic drifting. The periodic amplitude modulation in the IP is found to be anti-correlated with that in the weak preceding component of the MP (MP_I), but correlated with that in the first two components of the MP (MP_II), which implies that the modulation patterns in the IP and the MP are phase-locked. What is more interesting is that the modulation in MP_II is delayed that in the IP by about 1P. Furthermore, high sensitivity observations by FAST reveal that weak emission exists between the MP and the IP. In addition, we confirm that the separation between the IP and the MP is independent of radio frequency. The above results are a conundrum for pulsar theories and cannot be satisfactorily explained by the current pulsar models. Therefore, our results observed with FAST provide an opportunity to probe the structure of pulsar emission and the neutron stars magnetosphere.
We report the parallax and proper motion of millisecond pulsar J0030+0451, one of thirteen known isolated millisecond pulsars in the disk of the Galaxy. We obtained more than 6 years of monthly data from the 305 m Arecibo telescope at 430 MHz and 1410 MHz. We measure the parallax of PSR J0030+0451 to be 3.3 +/- 0.9 mas, corresponding to a distance of 300 +/- 90 pc. The Cordes and Lazio (2002) model of galactic electron distribution yields a dispersion measure derived distance of 317 pc which agrees with our measurement. We place the pulsars transverse space velocity in the range of 8 to 17 km/s, making this pulsar one of the slowest known. We perform a brief census of velocities of isolated versus binary millisecond pulsars. We find the velocities of the two populations are indistinguishable. However, the scale height of the binary population is twice that of the isolated population and the luminosity functions of the two populations are different. We suggest that the scale height difference may be an artifact of the luminosity difference.
We report on sensitive phase-referenced and gated 1.4-GHz VLBI radio observations of the pulsar PSR J0205+6449 in the young pulsar-wind nebula 3C 58, made in 2007 and 2010. We employed a novel technique where the ~105-m Green Bank telescope is used simultaneously to obtain single-dish data used to determine the pulsars period as well as to obtain the VLBI data, allowing the VLBI correlation to be gated synchronously with the pulse to increase the signal-to-noise. The high timing noise of this young pulsar precludes the determination of the proper motion from the pulsar timing. We derive the position of the pulsar accurate at the milliarcsecond level, which is consistent with a re-determined position from the Chandra X-ray observations. We reject the original tentative optical identification of the pulsar by Shearer and Neustroev (2008), but rather identify a different optical counterpart on their images, with R-band magnitude ~24. We also determine an accurate proper motion for PSR J0205+6449 of (2.3 +- 0.3) mas/yr, corresponding to a projected velocity of only (35 +- 6) km/s for a distance of 3.2 kpc, at p.a. -38 deg. This projected velocity is quite low compared to the velocity dispersion of known pulsars of ~200 km/s. Our measured proper motion does not suggest any particular kinematic age for the pulsar.
We present a measurement of the systemic proper motion of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) from astrometry with the High Resolution Camera (HRC) of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We observed LMC fields centered on 21 background QSOs that were discovered from their optical variability in the MACHO database. The QSOs are distributed homogeneously behind the central few degrees of the LMC. With 2 epochs of HRC data and a ~2 year baseline we determine the proper motion of the LMC to better than 5% accuracy: mu_W = -2.03 +/- 0.08 mas/yr; mu_N = 0.44 +/- 0.05 mas/yr. This is the most accurate proper motion measurement for any Milky Way satellite thus far. When combined with HI data from the Magellanic Stream this should provide new constraints on both the mass distribution of the Galactic Halo and models of the Stream.
In this work, we study the X-ray bow-shock nebula powered by the mature pulsar PSR B1929+10 using data from XMM-Newton, with an effective exposure of $sim$ 300 ks, offering the deepest investigation of this system thus far. We found the X-ray axial outflow extends as long as $sim$ 8 arc minute behind the proper motion direction, which is a factor of two longer than the result reported in the previous study. Furthermore, we found evidence of two faint lateral outflows extending laterally with respect to the proper motion. We also found indications of spectral hardening along the axial outflow, suggesting that certain acceleration processes might occur along this feature.