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.


Inidividual pulses visible in NICER housekeeping data for RX J0209.6-7427

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