Green Bank Telescope Measurement of the Systemic Velocity of the Double Pulsar Binary J0737–3039 and Implications for Its Formation

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Published 2004 June 14 • © 2004. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
, , Citation S. M. Ransom et al 2004 ApJ 609 L71 DOI 10.1086/422911

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Author affiliations

1 Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 University Street, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8, Canada

2 Department of Physics and Center for Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139

3 Canada Research Chair; NSERC Steacie Fellow

4 Department of Astronomy, University of California, 601 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720

5 Chandra Fellow; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

6 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, P.O. Box 2, Green Bank, WV 24944

7 Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, MS 105-24, Pasadena, CA 91125

Dates

  1. Received 2004 April 8
  2. Accepted 2004 June 1
  3. Published
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1538-4357/609/2/L71

Abstract

We report on the measurement at 820 and 1400 MHz of the orbital modulation of the diffractive scintillation timescale from pulsar A in the double-pulsar system J0737-3039 using the Green Bank Telescope. With fits to this modulation, we determine the systemic velocity in the plane of the sky to be VISS ≃ 140.9 ± 6.2 km s-1. The parallel and perpendicular components of this velocity with respect to the line of nodes of the pulsar's orbit are Vplane ≃ 96.0 ± 3.7 km s-1 and Vperp ≃ 103.1 ± 7.7 km s-1, respectively. The large Vperp implies that pulsar B was born with a kick speed of ≳100 km s-1. Future Very Long Baseline Array determinations of the angular proper motion in conjunction with improved VISS measurements should provide a precise distance to the system. Using high-precision timing data and the VISS model, we estimate a best-fit orbital inclination of i = 88fdg7 ± 0fdg9.

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10.1086/422911