No Arabic abstract
We present measurements of the size of the Vela pulsar in 3 gates across the pulse, from observations of the distribution of intensity. We calculate the effects on this distribution of noise in the observing system, and measure and remove it using observations of a strong continuum source. We also calculate and remove the expected effects of averaging in time and frequency. We find that effects of variations in pulsar flux density and instrumental gain, self-noise, and one-bit digitization are undetectably small. Effects of normalization of the correlation are detectable, but do not affect the fitted size. The size of the pulsar declines from 440 +/- 90 km (FWHM of best-fitting Gaussian distribution) to less than 200 km across the pulse. We discuss implications of this size for theories of pulsar emission.
We present measurements of the linear diameter of the emission region of the Vela pulsar at observing wavelength lambda=18 cm. We infer the diameter as a function of pulse phase from the distribution of visibility on the Mopra-Tidbinbilla baseline. As we demonstrate, in the presence of strong scintillation, finite size of the emission region produces a characteristic W-shaped signature in the projection of the visibility distribution onto the real axis. This modification involves heightened probability density near the mean amplitude, decreased probability to either side, and a return to the zero-size distribution beyond. We observe this signature with high statistical significance, as compared with the best-fitting zero-size model, in many regions of pulse phase. We find that the equivalent full width at half maximum of the pulsars emission region decreases from more than 400 km early in the pulse to near zero at the peak of the pulse, and then increases again to approximately 800 km near the trailing edge. We discuss possible systematic effects, and compare our work with previous results.
Vela X is a region of extended radio emission in the western part of the Vela constellation: one of the nearest pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe), and associated with the energetic Vela pulsar (PSR B0833-45). Extended very-high-energy (VHE) $gamma$-ray emission (HESS $mathrm{J0835mhyphen 455}$) was discovered using the H.E.S.S. experiment in 2004. The VHE $gamma$-ray emission was found to be coincident with a region of X-ray emission discovered with ${it ROSAT}$ above 1.5 keV (the so-called textit{Vela X cocoon}): a filamentary structure extending southwest from the pulsar to the centre of Vela X. A deeper observation of the entire Vela X nebula region, also including larger offsets from the cocoon, has been performed with H.E.S.S. This re-observation was carried out in order to probe the extent of the non-thermal emission from the Vela X region at TeV energies and to investigate its spectral properties. In order to increase the sensitivity to the faint $gamma$-ray emission from the very extended Vela X region, a multivariate analysis method combining three complementary reconstruction techniques of Cherenkov-shower images is applied for the selection of $gamma$-ray events. The analysis is performed with the On/Off background method, which estimates the background from separate observations pointing away from Vela X; towards regions free of $gamma$-ray sources but with comparable observation conditions. The $gamma$-ray surface brightness over the large Vela X region reveals that the detection of non-thermal VHE $gamma$-ray emission from the PWN HESS $mathrm{J0835mhyphen 455}$ is statistically significant over a region of radius 1.2$^{circ}$ around the position $alpha$ = 08$^{mathrm{h}}$ 35$^{mathrm{m}}$ 00$^{mathrm{s}}$, $delta$ = -45$^{circ}$ 36$^{mathrm{prime}}$ 00$^{mathrm{prime}mathrm{prime}}$ (J2000).
Convection, pulsation and magnetic fields have all been suggested as mechanisms for the transport of mass and energy from the optical photosphere of red supergiants, out to the region where the stellar wind is launched. We imaged the red supergiant Betelgeuse at 0.06-0.18 arcsec resolution, using e-MERLIN at 5.5--6.0 GHz, with a sensitivity of ~0.01 mJy/beam. Most of the radio emission comes from within an ellipse (0.235x0.218) arcsec^2 (~5x the optical radius), with a flux density of 1.62 mJy, giving an average brightness temperature ~1250 K. This radio photosphere contains two hotspots of 0.53 and 0.79 mJy/beam, separated by 90 milli-arcsec, with brightness temperatures 5400+/-600 K and 3800+/-500 K. Similar hotspots, at more than double the distance from the photosphere of those seen in any other regime, were detected by the less-sensitive `old MERLIN in 1992, 1995 and 1996 and many exceed the photospheric temperature of 3600 K. Such brightness temperatures are high enough to emanate from pockets of chromospheric plasma. Other possibilities include local shock heating, the convective dredge-up of hot material or exceptionally cool, low density regions, transparent down to the hottest layer at ~40 milliarcsec radius. We also detect an arc 0.2--0.3 arcsec to the SW, brightness temperature ~150 K, in a similar direction to extensions seen on both smaller and larger scales in the infra-red and in CO at mm wavelengths. These preliminary results will be followed by further e-MERLIN, VLA and ALMA observations to help resolve the problem of mass elevation from 1 to 10 R* in red supergiants.
We present here the analysis of giant micropulses from the Vela pulsar. A total of 4187 giant micropulses with peak flux density $>$2.5 Jy were detected during almost 4 hours of observations carried out with the Yunnan 40-m radio telescope at 6800 MHz. Nine of the giant micropulses arrived approximately 3 to 4 ms earlier than the peak of average pulse profile, longer than that at lower frequencies. The remaining giant micropulses were clustered into three distributions which correspond to three main emission regions, including four occurring on the trailing edge of averaged profile.
We have investigated the mode-changing properties of PSR B0329+54 using 31 epochs of simultaneous 13 cm/3 cm single-pulse observations obtained with Shanghai Tian Ma 65 m telescope. The pulsar was found in the abnormal emission mode 17 times, accounting for ~13% of the 41.6 hours total observation time. Single pulse analyses indicate that mode changes took place simultaneously at 13 cm/3 cm within a few rotational periods. We detected occasional bright and narrow pulses whose peak flux densities were 10 times higher than that of the integrated profile in both bands. At 3 cm, about 0.66% and 0.27% of single pulses were bright in the normal mode and abnormal mode respectively, but at 13 cm the occurrence rate was only about 0.007%. We divided the pulsar radiation window into three components (C1, C2 and C3) corresponding to the main peaks of the integrated profile. The bright pulses preferentially occurred at pulse phases corresponding to the peaks of C2 and C3. Fluctuation spectra showed that C2 had excess red noise in the normal mode, but broad quasi-periodic features with central frequencies around 0.12 cycles/period in the abnormal mode. At 3 cm, C3 had a stronger quasi-periodic modulation centered around 0.06 cycles/period in the abnormal mode. Although there were some asymmetries in the two-dimensional fluctuation spectra, we found no clear evidence for systematic subpulse drifting. Consistent with previous low-frequency observations, we found a very low nulling probability for B0329+54 with upper limits of 0.13% and 1.68% at 13 cm/3 cm respectively.