NICER / ISS Science Nugget
for December 19, 2019
NICER sees bright pulsar in Magellanic bridge
NICER continues to monitor the newly discovered pulsar RX J0209.6-7427 that was
found to be pulsing by NICER in the Magellanic Bridge that connects the Small and
Large Magellanic Clouds. The source has been brightening over the past week to
the point that we can now see individual X-ray pulses (every 9.3 seconds) in both
the processed NICER X-ray event data as well as in the NICER housekeeping data
stream.
The figure shows a screenshot (upper left corner) of a web page that the
NICER team publishes live of select NICER telemetry and an X-ray rate light curve
(lower right corner). In both HK and processed data, the 9.3 second pulse period
of RXJ 0209.6-7427 is clearly visible. NICER continues to monitor this binary
system in order to determine its orbital parameters.
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