2003/10/30 by Oleg Kargaltsev, O. Kargaltsev, George G. Pavlov +3 · 4 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Luminosity #Millisecond pulsar #Neutron star #Physics #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/380993
published as Astrophys.J. 602 (2004) 327-335 · 26 pages, 7 figures, to appear in ApJ, v602, February 10, 2004 issue
arxiv created 2003/10/30 · openalex publication_date 2004/02/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We observed PSR J0437-4715 with the FUV-MAMA detector of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrometer (STIS) to measure the pulsar's spectrum and pulsations. For the first time, UV emission from a millisecond pulsar has been detected. The measured flux, (2.0 ± 0.2) × 10 -15 ergs s -1 cm -2 in the 1150-1700 Å range, corresponds to the luminosity L FUV = (4.7 ± 0.5) × 10 27 ergs s -1 , for the distance of 140 pc and negligible interstellar extinction. The shape of the observed spectrum suggests thermal emission from the neutron star surface with a surprisingly high temperature of about 1 × 10 5 K, above the upper limit on the surface temperature of the younger "ordinary" pulsar J0108-1431. For the few-Gigayear-old J0437-4715, such a temperature requires a heating mechanism to operate. The spectrum of J0437-4715 shows marginal evidence of an emission line at 1372 Å, which might be a gravitationally redshifted Zeeman component of the hydrogen Lyα line in a magnetic field of ~7 × 10 8 G. No pulsations are detected, with a 3 σ upper limit of 50% on the pulsed fraction.