Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Scientific paper
2011-02-23
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Version accepted by MNRAS Letters (new title and substantial changes in response to referees reports); 5 pages, 2 colour figur
Scientific paper
A deep Very Large Array observation of the Geminga pulsar field led to the discovery, at a higher than 10 sigma significance level, of radio emission trailing the neutron star proper motion. This 10-arcsec-long radio feature, detected with a flux of 0.4 mJy at 4.8 GHz, is marginally displaced (2.7\pm1.8 arcsec) from the pulsar (which, at any rate, is unlikely to contribute with magnetospheric pulsed emission more than 15% to the total observed radio luminosity, about 1E26 erg/s) and positionally coincident with the X-ray axial tail recently discovered by Chandra and ascribed to the pulsar wind nebula (PWN). Overall, the Geminga radio tail is compatible with the scenario of a synchrotron-emitting PWN, but the present data do not allow us to discriminate between different (and not always necessarily mutually exclusive) possible processes for producing that. If this radio feature does not result from intrinsic peculiarities of Geminga, but its proximity and radio-quiet nature (both helping in not hindering the faint diffuse radio emission), other relatively near and energetic radio-quiet pulsars could show similar structures in dedicated interferometric observations.
Esposito Paolo
Govoni Federica
Murgia Mariella
Pellizzoni Alberto
Possenti Andrea
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