The Vela Pulsar in the Ultraviolet

Abstract

We describe time-tagged observations of the Vela pulsar (PSR B0833-45) with the HST STIS MAMA-UV detectors. Using an optimal extraction technique, we obtain a NUV light curve and crude FUV phase-resolved spectra. The pulse is dominated by complex non-thermal emission at all phases. We obtain approximate spectral indices for the brightest pulse components, relate these to pulsations observed in other wavebands, and constrain the thermal surface emission from the neutron star. An upper limit on the Rayleigh-Jeans component at UV pulse minimum suggests a rather low mean surface temperature T_eff^\infty <4.6 x 10^5 (d_{300}/R_{14.2})^2 K. If confirmed by improved phase-resolved spectroscopy, this observation has significant impact on our understanding of neutron star interiors.

14 pages, 7 figures, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (7)

• Neutron Star Cooling
• Giant Pulses from the Millisecond Pulsar B1821-24
• High time-resolution observations of the Vela pulsar
• Confronting Neutron Star Cooling Theories with New Observations
• The Multi-Component Nature of the Vela Pulsar Nonthermal X-ray Spectrum
• The Vela Pulsar in the Near-Infrared
• Multicolor Photometry of the Vela Pulsar

Cited by in corpus (25)

• Fermi LAT Observations of the Vela Pulsar
• Temperature distribution in magnetized neutron star crusts. II. The effect of a strong toroidal component
• The soft gamma-ray pulsar population: an high-energy overview
• A two-dimensional electrodynamical outer gap model for gamma-ray pulsars: Gamma-ray spectrum
• Particle Acceleration and Non-Thermal Emission in Pulsar Outer Magnetospheric Gap
• Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope: High-Energy Results from the First Year
• Phase resolved spectroscopy of the Vela pulsar with XMM-Newton
• Subaru optical observations of the two middle-aged pulsars PSR B0656+14 and Geminga
• UV emission from young and middle-aged pulsars: Connecting X-rays with the optical
• Multiwavelength spectroscopy of PSR B0656+14
• Discovery of a Radiation Component from the Vela Pulsar Reaching 20 Teraelectronvolts
• The relative and absolute timing accuracy of the EPIC-pn camera on XMM-Newton, from X-ray pulsations of the Crab and other pulsars
• The Vela and Geminga pulsars in the mid-infrared
• The Optical Spectrum of the Vela Pulsar
• The Near-UV Pulse Profile and Spectrum of the Pulsar PSR B0656+14
• The first detection of a pulsar with ALMA
• The first ultraviolet detection of the Large Magellanic Cloud pulsar PSR B0540-69 and its multi-wavelength properties
• The Vela pulsar and its likely counter-jet in the K_s band
• The Vela Pulsar With an Active Fallback Disk
• Timing analysis and pulse profile of the Vela pulsar in the optical band from Iqueye observations
• The gamma-ray spectrum of Geminga and the inverse Compton model of pulsar high energy emission
• The Vela pulsar and its pulsar wind nebula Vela-X using 13 years of Fermi-LAT Observations
• Multi-wavelength emission region of gamma-ray emitting pulsars
• Hubble Space Telescope detection of the double pulsar system J0737-3039 in the far-ultraviolet
• Toward explanation of the X-ray - radio correlation in the Vela pulsar