paper

Observations of the Crab Nebula and its pulsar in the far-ultraviolet and in the optical

arXiv:astro-ph/0002374 · doi:10.1086/309062

Abstract

We present HST/STIS far-UV observations of the Crab nebula and its pulsar. Broad, blueshifted absorption arising in the nebula is seen in C IV 1550, reaching about 2500 km/s. This can be interpreted as evidence for a fast outer shell, and we adopt a spherically symmetric model to constrain the properties of this. We find that the density appears to decrease outward in the shell. A lower limit to the mass is 0.3 solar masses with an accompanying kinetic energy of 1.5EE{49} ergs. A massive 10^{51} erg shell cannot be excluded, but is less likely if the density profile is much steeper than R^{-4} and the velocity is <6000 km/s. The observations cover the region 1140-1720 A. With the time-tag mode of the spectrograph we obtain the pulse profile. It is similar to that in the near-UV, although the primary peak is marginally narrower. Together with the near-UV data, and new optical data from NOT, our spectrum of the pulsar covers the entire region from 1140-9250 A. Dereddening the spectrum gives a flat spectrum for E(B-V)=0.52, R=3.1. This dereddened spectrum of the Crab pulsar can be fitted by a power law with spectral index alpha_ν = 0.11 +/- 0.04. The main uncertainty is the amount and characteristics of the interstel- lar reddening, and we have investigated the dependence of α_ν on E(B-V) and R. In the extended emission covered by our 25" x 0.5" slit in the far-UV, we detect C IV 1550 and He II 1640 emission lines from the Crab nebula. Several interstellar absorption lines are detected toward the pulsar. The Ly alpha absorption indicates a column density of 3.0+/-0.5\EE{21} cm^{-2} of neutral hydrogen, which agrees well with our estimate of E(B-V)=0.52 mag. Other lines show no evidence of severe depletion of metals in atomic gas.

arXiv comment18 pages emulateapj style, including 10 figures. ApJ, accepted

References in corpus (2)

Cited by in corpus (65)