2008/03/31 by George G. Pavlov, G. G. Pavlov, Oleg Kargaltsev +3 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black-body radiation #Flux (metallurgy) #Galaxy #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Luminosity #Millisecond pulsar #Neutron star #Observatory #Optics #Physics #Point source #Proper motion #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radiation #Stars #X-ray pulsar #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/691/1/458
published as Astrophys.J.691:458-464,2009 · 8 pages, 9 figures, accepted to ApJ; minor revisions in Sections 2.2 and 3.1
arxiv created 2008/10/13 · openalex publication_date 2009/01/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
PSR J0108–1431 is a nearby, 170 Myr old, very faint radio pulsar near the "pulsar death line" in the P – diagram. We observed the pulsar field with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and detected a point source (53 counts in a 30 ks exposure; energy flux (9 ± 2) × 10 −15 erg cm −2 s −1 in the 0.3–8 keV band) close to the radio pulsar position. Based on the large X-ray/optical flux ratio at the X-ray source position, we conclude that the source is the X-ray counterpart of PSR J0108–1431. The pulsar spectrum can be described by a power-law model with photon index Γ ≈ 2.2 and luminosity L 0.3-8 keV ≈ 2 × 10 28 d 2 130 erg s −1 , or by a blackbody model with temperature kT ≈ 0.28 keV and bolometric luminosity L bol ≈ 1.3 × 10 28 d 2 130 erg s −1 , for a plausible hydrogen column density N H = 7.3 × 10 19 cm −2 ( d 130 = d /130 pc). The pulsar converts ∼0.4% of its spin-down power into X-ray luminosity, i.e., its X-ray efficiency is higher than for most younger pulsars. From the comparison of the X-ray position with the previously measured radio positions, we estimated the pulsar proper motion of 0.2 arcsec yr −1 ( V ⊥ ≈ 130 d 130 km s −1 ), in the south–southeast direction.