SIMBAD references

The isolated pulsar PSR 1509-58 has been detected by the coded-aperture hard X-ray/soft γ-ray SIGMA telescope after 192 hours of observations in 1990-1993. The source exhibits, in the 40-300 keV energy range, a photon spectrum well fitted by a power law with an index -0.9±0.6, slightly harder than that of the pulsed spectrum reported by BATSE in the same energy interval. Taking the distance to be 4.2 kpc, the isotropic source luminosity is 6 10³⁵erg/s in the 40-300 keV energy interval, or 3 % of the total pulsar rotational energy loss. This makes PSR 1509-58 by far the most efficient producer of hard X-rays among the few pulsars detected so far in this energy range.