by Simon Johnston (CASS)

Spiewak et al. report on the discovery of a fascinating millisecond pulsar as part of the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) survey on the Parkes radio telescope. PSR J2322-6250 has one of the lowest magnetic field strengths and one of the lowest radio luminosities of any of the known milliseconds pulsars. In addition, it forms part of a binary system with a companion which has a mass of only 0.001 solar masses (i.e. planetary mass). The companion has been detected in the optical.

The figure shows the spin-down energy of millisecond pulsars versus their radio luminosity with J2322-6250 in the bottom left. – Reference: Spiewak et al. 2017, MNRAS, in press