Pulsar B0656+14: Highly Unusual Emission Properties and a Local RRAT

The emission of PSR B0656+14 can be characterized by two separate populations of highly linearly polarized pulses: bright pulses have a narrow spiky appearance consisting of short quasi‐periodic bursts of emission with microstructure, in contrast to the underlying weaker broad pulses. The spiky pulses tend to appear in clusters which arise and dissipate over about 10 periods. We demonstrate that the spiky emission builds a narrow and peaked profile, whereas the weak emission produces a broad hump, which is largely responsible for the shoulders in the total emission profiles at both high and low frequencies. Simultaneous Arecibo Observatory and Westerbork observations further assist us in understanding the emission of this important pulsar. The recently discovered rotating‐radio‐transient (RRAT) sources are characterized by very bright radio bursts that occur periodically but very infrequently. We find bursts with the same characteristics in B0656+14. These bursts represent pulses from the bright end of an extended smooth pulse‐energy distribution and are shown to be unlike giant pulses, giant micropulses or the pulses of normal pulsars. The extreme peak‐fluxes of the brightest of these pulses indicates that PSR B0656+14, were it not so near, could only have been discovered as an RRAT source. Longer observations of some of the RRATs have revealed that they, like PSR B0656+14, emit weaker emission in addition to the bursts.