Timing an Exotic Binary Pulsar
Abstract
The Green Bank North Celestial Cap (GBNCC) survey is a 350 MHz all-sky survey using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia carried out in order to discover pulsars. To date, the survey has discovered over 161 pulsars, including 20 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) and 11 rotating radio transients (RRATs). The survey has covered declinations from -40 degrees and upwards. Several exotic pulsars have been discovered in the survey, including J1800+50, an intermittent binary pulsar with a 176 milliseconds spin period. It has a binary period of 2 days, an eccentricity of 0.3, and a semimajor axis of 7 light seconds. This pulsar has a much longer period than millisecond pulsars with white dwarf companions, and therefore most likely has a neutron star or main sequence companion, making it a rarity among binary pulsars. We are currently calculating a timing solution over several years of data, which will result in an accurate position, so we may search for a possible optical companion. Timing this pulsar has proved difficult as more than half of all observations of the pulsar have been unable to detect it. Future studies will also show whether this pulsar's intermittency is related to its binary nature, intrinsic to the pulsar, or due to modulations from the interstellar medium.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #235
- Pub Date:
- January 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AAS...23510206A