Geminga's Tails: A Pulsar Bow Shock Probing the Interstellar Medium

We report the X-ray Multimirror Mission-Newton European Photon Imaging Camera observation of two elongated parallel x-ray tails trailing the pulsar Geminga. They are aligned with the object's supersonic motion, extend for ~2', and have a nonthermal spectrum produced by electron-synchrotron...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2003-09, Vol.301 (5638), p.1345-1347
Main Authors: Caraveo, P. A., Bignami, G. F., DeLuca, A., Mereghetti, S., Pellizzoni, A., Mignani, R., Tur, A., Becker, W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astronomy
Cameras
Earth, ocean, space
Electron emission
Electrons
Emissions
Energy
Exact sciences and technology
Geometric planes
In kind support and maintenance
Interstellar medium
Late stages of stellar evolution (including black holes)
Magnetic fields
Observations
Phenomenology
Photons
Proper motions
Pulsars
Stars
Technology application
X-rays
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Summary:We report the X-ray Multimirror Mission-Newton European Photon Imaging Camera observation of two elongated parallel x-ray tails trailing the pulsar Geminga. They are aligned with the object's supersonic motion, extend for ~2', and have a nonthermal spectrum produced by electron-synchrotron emission in the bow shock between the pulsar wind and the surrounding medium. Electron lifetime against synchrotron cooling matches the source transit time over the x-ray features' length. Such an x-ray detection of a pulsar bow shock (with no Hα emission) allows us to gauge the pulsar electron injection energy and the shock magnetic field while constraining the angle of Geminga's motion and the local matter density.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1086973