The central source of the supernova remnant PKS 1209-51/52 was observed with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer aboard Chandra X-Ray Observatory on 2000 January 6-7. The use of the continuous clocking mode allowed us to perform the timing analysis of the data with a time resolution of 2.85 ms and to find a period P = 0.42412924 s ± 0.23 μs. The detection of this short period proves that the source is a neutron star. It may be either an active pulsar with an unfavorably directed radio beam or a truly radio-silent neutron star whose X-ray pulsations are caused by a nonuniform distribution of surface temperature. To infer the actual properties of this neutron star, the period derivative should be measured.
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Zavlin et al. (2000) studied this question.
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