Neutron stars are exremely compact objects, with typical radii of only 10 km. Therefore, their thermal radiation is very faint, in spite of high surface temperatures. Nevertheless, they can be observed with very large telescopes. The Hubble Space Telescope provides unprecedented opportunities to observe these tiny objects because their images are not blurred by the earth atmosphere.
Our first observations of radio pulsars were carried out with the Faint Object Camera (FOC) in 1994. Look at this FOC image of PSR 1929+10 (Pavlov, Stringfellow and Cordova 1996). The size of the image is 7x7 arcseconds. The pulsar is shown with the arrow. Its stellar magnitude is 27.1. Since it is close to a much brighter star, PSR 1929+10 could not be observed from the ground even with a very large telescope. In addition to this pulsar, we also observed PSR 0656+14 and PSR 0950+08 in 1994. This was the first successful observation of middle-aged and old NSs in the optical/UV range. This observation revealed that the optical-UV radiation of PSR 0656+14 is generated in the pulsar's magnetosphere, whereas radiation from the older pulsars PSR 1929+10 and 0950+08 is likely emitted from the NS surface.
PSR 0656+14 was also observed with several spectral filters in 1996 (Pavlov, Welty and Cordova 1997). ...
In 1998 we observed PSR 0656+14 and Geminga with NICMOS, an infrared camera (Harlow, Pavlov and Halpern 1998). PSR 0656+14 was observed with 3 filters centered at wavelengths 1.1, 1.6 and 1.9 microns. Geminga was observed only with former 2 filters. .....
F. A. Cordova, G. S. Stringfellow and G. G. Pavlov 1994
"HST observations of PSR 0656+14"
Bull. AAS , 26, 889
G. S. Stringfellow, G. G. Pavlov and F. A. Cordova 1994
"UV-Optical Observations of Pulsars with the post-COSTAR HST"
Bull. AAS , 26, 1441
G. G. Pavlov, G. S. Stringfellow and F. A. Cordova 1996
"Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Isolated Pulsars"
Astrophys. J., 467, 370
G. G. Pavlov, A. D. Welty and F. A. Cordova 1997
"Hubble Space Telescope Observations of the Middle-Aged Pulsar 0656+14"
Astrophys. J., 489, L75
J.J.B. Harlow, G.G. Pavlov and J.P. Halpern 1998
"HST/NICMOS Observations of PSR 0656+14 and Geminga"
Bull. AAS , 30, 1314 (41.07)
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