the identification of earth mass planetary companions around a nearby millisecond radio pulsar, psr 1257+12, has raised the possibility that planetary systems may form during the evolution of these pulsar systems. we therefore propose to search for the thermal dust emission of protoplanetary and debris disks around millisecond pulsars and their progenitor binary pulsar systems. if dust is present and can be heated by the spin-down energy of millisecond pulsars, its infrared flux will dominate that of the pulsar or any planets and can be detected by iso via its far-infrared continuum emission. standard mass limits from pulsar timing toward these and other objects generally rule out unknown companion objects larger than asteroids. further investigation with improved instrumentation is warranted on millisecond pulsars as they are an important class of systems capable of producing planetary size companions, and by inference, systems that may have evolved through a stage of protoplanetary formation. if we detect this dust around any millisecond pulsars, the spectral information we obtain with isophot will give us important clues to the formation of planetary bodies around post supernova compact stars. it will also imply that planetary formation is quite common around different classes of stars. we have selected all known millisecond radio pulsars closer than 1 kpc as possible targets for our investigation. these pulsars are distributed around the sky and are reflective of current efforts to survey the entire sky for millisecond pulsars. iso observations will substantially improve on early observations made in the infrared with iras and the irtf. iso will give better sensitivity and frequency coverage toward possible remnant planetary dust around millisecond pulsars than any ground based observations.
Instrument
PHT32
Temporal Coverage
1996-08-21T07:53:14Z/1997-05-06T06:24:04Z
Version
1.0
Mission Description
The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was the world's first true orbiting infrared observatory. Equipped with four highly-sophisticated and versatile scientific instruments, it was launched by Ariane in November 1995 and provided astronomers world-wide with a facility of unprecedented sensitivity and capabilities for a detailed exploration of the Universe at infrared wavelengths.
