Study of spider pulsar binary eclipses and discovery of an eclipse mechanism transition

Understand

We present a comparative study of the low-frequency eclipses of spider (compact, irradiating binary) PSRs B1957+20 and J1816+4510.

• Combining these data with those of three other eclipsing systems we study the frequency dependence of the eclipse duration.
• PSRs B1957+20 and J1816+4510 have similar orbital properties, but the companions to the pulsars have masses that differ by an order of magnitude.
• A dedicated campaign to simultaneously observe the pulsed and imaged continuum flux densities throughout the eclipses reveals many similarities between the excess material within the two binaries, irrespective of the companion star properties.