Optical pulsar in the Large Magellanic Cloud remnant 0540-69. 3

Conference · Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1984

OSTI ID:6095710

Middleditch, J; Pennypacker, C R

We have detected pulsed optical emission from the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) X-ray pulsar PSR 0540-693 (Seward et al. 1984). The pulsed emission has a time averaged magnitude of approximately 22.7. The X-ray pulsar was discovered in the LMC remnant, 0540-69.3 as a pulse repetition period of approx. 50 milliseconds (ms) in Einstein Obsrvatory data (Seward et al. 1984). Earlier, Clark et al. (1982) had noted that this remnant resembles the Crab Nebula because of the X-ray power law spectrum, and suggested that the nebular emission was synchrotron radiation powered by a central pulsar. After the announcement of X-ray pulsed emission, Chanan et al. (1984) measured the broad optical band properties of the nebula and found evidence for synchrotron emission. They reported that the 4.5 arc second continuum emission remnant has only a tenth the luminosity of the Crab Nebula. We have recorded broad-band optical time-series data at 1 ms intervals with the 4-m and 1.5-m Cerro Tololo telescopes and have found strong pulsations, employing the usual Fourier transform methods. A summary of the observations, including magnitudes, barycentric frequencies and times of arrival is given.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 6095710
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-85-286; CONF-8410232-1; ON: DE85006707
• Resource Relation: Conference: Workshop on the crab nebula and related supernova remnants, Washington, DC, USA, 11 Oct 1984
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
PULSARS
VISIBLE RADIATION
X RADIATION
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FOURIER TRANSFORMATION
PULSATIONS
VARIATIONS
COSMIC RADIO SOURCES
DATA
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
INFORMATION
INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATIONS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
NUMERICAL DATA
RADIATIONS
TRANSFORMATIONS
640102* - Astrophysics & Cosmology- Stars & Quasi-Stellar
Radio & X-Ray Sources