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Optical pulsations in the Large Magellanic Cloud remnant 0540–69.3

Nature volume 313, pages 659–661 (1985)Cite this article

Abstract

The X-ray pulsar PSR0540–693 was discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) supernova remnant, 0540–69.3, by Seward, Harnden and Helfand1, as a pulse, with repetition period ∼50 ms, in Einstein Observatory data. Previously, Clark et al.2 had noted that this remnant resembles the Crab Nebula because of the X-ray power law spectrum and suggested that the nebular emission was synchrotron radiation powered by a central pulsar. After the announcement of X-ray pulsed emission, Chanan et al.3 measured the broad optical band properties of the nebula and found evidence for synchrotron emission. They reported that the 4.5-arc s continuum emission remnant has only a tenth of the luminosity of the Crab Nebula. We have now detected pulsed optical emission for the X-ray pulsar, having a time-averaged magnitude of ∼22.7.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatories, PO Box 26732, Tucson, Arizona, 85726, USA

    John Middleditch & Carleton Pennypacker

  2. Earth and Space Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, PO Box 1663, Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87545, USA

    John Middleditch

  3. Space Sciences Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA

    Carleton Pennypacker

Authors
  1. John Middleditch
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  2. Carleton Pennypacker
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Middleditch, J., Pennypacker, C. Optical pulsations in the Large Magellanic Cloud remnant 0540–69.3. Nature 313, 659–661 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/313659a0

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