FUNA Lunch Talk:

Scott Ransom

NRAO

Two Wicked Cool New Pulsar Results

June 13

12:10PM, Room 230, NRAO, Edgemont Road

Abstract:

In this talk I'll describe two new results that are currently in press in Science (Champion et al 2008 and Breton et al 2008). The first is a very strange new millisecond pulsar in an eccentric orbit with a possibly main sequence star. The system is strange (and Science-worthy) because we don't know how to form such a system (also, the neutron star seems quite massive). The second result is the first quantitative measurement of relativistic precession from an astrophysical system. While that is cool in itself, the really cool part is that the measurements weren't made using "standard" pulsar timing, but by detailed modelling of eclipse lightcurves from the double-pulsar.