X-ray observations of the pulsar B1929+10 and its environment
Zdenka Misanovic (Pennstate University) , George Pavlov (Pennstate), Gordon Garmire (Pennstate)
We report on two Chandra observations of B1929+10, which reveal a PWN with a torus bent in the direction opposite to the pulsar's proper motion and possibly a small jet in the immediate vicinity of this 3-Myr-old pulsar. There is also a long tail behind the pulsar, extending up to 2' in Chandra images and 15' in the XMM-Newton data, with a luminosity of 10e30 ergs/s in the 0.3-8 keV band. However, the PWN morphology does not seem to be entirely consistent with the existing MHD simulations for bow-shock PWNe, suggesting that the intrinsic anisotropy of the pulsar wind must be taken into account when modelling such objects. Contrary to previous results, our spectral analysis suggests that, in addition to the magnetospheric emission, there is a strong thermal component ( 40-500f the total emission in the 0.3-10 keV band) in the pulsar's spectrum. The combined Chandra and XMM-Newton data suggest that the thermal emission emerges from a polar cap region with an apparent radius of 30-40 m and a temperature of about 0.3 keV.