Proper Motion of the Crab Pulsar Revisited

Abstract

It has been suggested that the Crab pulsar's proper motion is well aligned with the symmetry axis of the pulsar wind nebula. We have re-visited this question, examining over 6 years of F547M WFPC2 chip 3 images to obtain a best-fit value of ${\mu }_{\ast }=14.9\pm 0.8$mas/yr at PA $278\arcdeg \pm 3\arcdeg$. At $26\arcdeg\pm 3\arcdeg$ to the nebula axis, this substantially relaxes constraints on the birth kick of this pulsar. Such misalignment allows the momentum to be imparted over $\sim$1s timescales.

10 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Cited by in corpus (8)

• When A Standard Candle Flickers
• A Precise Proper Motion for the Crab Pulsar, and the Difficulty of Testing Spin-Kick Alignment for Young Neutron Stars
• Optical polarisation of the Crab pulsar: precision measurements and comparison to the radio emission
• The Shape of Cas A
• Spin-Kick Correlation in Neutron Stars: Alignment Conditions and Implications
• HST multi-epoch imaging of the PSR B0540-69 system unveils a highly dynamic synchrotron nebula
• Implications of post-kick jets in core collapse supernovae
• A simple, flexible method for timing cross-calibration of space missions