The NuSTAR Program for Pulsar-wind Nebulae
Abstract
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), successfully launched in June 2012, is the first telescope to bring the the hard X-ray (3 to 79 keV) sky into focus. NuSTAR's combination of sensitivity and angular resolution enable it, for the first time, to study the morphology of pulsar wind nebuale (PWNe) above 10 keV. PWNe exhibit particles accelerated in pulsar magnetospheres and/or at relativistic wind- termination shocks; as those particles propagate out and suffer radiative and adiabatic losses, their synchrotron radiation contains morphological and spectral clues to the nature of particle acceleration and propagation. NuSTAR's hard x-ray band coupled with its imaging capabilities will address these questions, and in this poster we present NuSTAR plans for observing PWNe as well as preliminary results from the most famous PWN; the Crab.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #221
- Pub Date:
- January 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AAS...22124409M