THE OPTICAL COUNTERPART OF THE BRIGHT NEARBY MILLISECOND PULSAR PSR J0437-4715

Optical imaging of the field of PSR J0437 - 4715 reveals a candidate optical counterpart less than 1'' from the radio source location. The color and magnitude of this star are consistent with a 0.2 M. helium white dwarf with T(eff) almost-equal-to 4400 K at a distance of 150 parsecs. Such an object is expected as the binary companion of the neutron star, given the orbital characteristics determined from the radio observations. The cooling time for the white dwarf is greater than the characteristic spin-down age of the pulsar, which suggests that in some cases spin-down times computed from pulsar periods and period derivatives may not in fact represent an upper limit to the pulsar age. No luminosity variations over the orbital period are observed, down to a limit of a few tenths of a magnitude.