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D. Sanwal, E. L. Robinson (UT, Austin), R. F. Stiening (UMass, Amherst)
We have obtained simultaneous, multicolor optical photometry of the Crab pulsar at a time resolution of 1 microsecond, nearly a factor of 20 better than the best previous observations. The main pulse moves smoothly from the rising branch to the falling branch with neither a flat region nor a cusp at the top. The peak of the pulse in the optical arrives before the radio peak ( from Jordell Bank Crab Ephemeris ) by about 140 microseconds. The color of the emission changes during the pulse lightcurve but not significantly -- the maximum variation in the ratio of U to R band fluxes is about 20%. The pulsar has faded 3% since the observations of Crab pulsar using the same instrument, reported in Percival~et.~al. ( 1993, ApJ, 407, 276 ).
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: divas@leo.as.utexas.edu