Optical pulsar
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "Optical pulsar" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (August 2023)
An optical pulsar is a pulsar which can be detected in the visible spectrum. There are very few of these known: the Crab Pulsar was detected by stroboscopic techniques in 1969,[1][2] shortly after its discovery in radio waves, at the Steward Observatory. The Vela Pulsar was detected in 1977 at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, and was the faintest star ever imaged at that time.
Six known optical pulsars are listed by Shearer and Golden (2002):[3]
| Name of pulsar | Magnitude (B) |
|---|---|
| Crab Pulsar (CM Tauri, PSR B0531+21) | 16.5 |
| Vela Pulsar | 24 |
| PSR B0540-69 (in the Large Magellanic Cloud) | 23 |
| PSR B0656+14 | 26 |
| PSR B0633+17 (Geminga) | 25.5 |
| PSR B1509-58 (*) | 25.7 |
| *Source included but not discussed in paper by source paper. | |
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Cover photo is available under {{::mainImage.info.license.name || 'Unknown'}} license.
Cover photo is available under {{::mainImage.info.license.name || 'Unknown'}} license.
Credit:
(see original file).
