Abstract
WE report the discovery of a millisecond pulsar in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae (NGC104). It has a spin period of 4.479 ms and is a member of a binary system with an orbital period of 32 min and an eccentricity of 0.32. The mass function, 2.9 x 10–8M⊙, is the smallest value for any known binary system. We find that the observations are consistent with a neutron star of mass 1.4 M⊙ and a white-dwarf companion of mass 0.8 M⊙. The millisecond spin period combined with the very short orbital period offers, for the first time, the possibility of observing spin-orbit coupling effects predicted by general relativity theory.
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Abies, J., McConnell, D., Jacka, C. et al. A millisecond pulsar in a 32-minute binary orbit. Nature 342, 158–161 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/342158a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/342158a0
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