086538

PSR B0950+08 is a 17 Myr old bright radio pulsar at d=260 pc. X-ray observations of this pulsar provide a rare opportunity to test models of polar cap heating by precipitating magnetospheric particles comma while the UV-optical observations can test models of internal heating in neutron stars comma which are determined by fundamental properties of matter. The only previous XMM-Newton observation was not deep enough to reliably separate the polar cap and magnetospheric components comma while optical observations with ground-based telescopes lacked the needed angular resolution. The proposed deep XMM-Newton observations comma supplemented by an HST observation comma will be the most detailed multiwavelength study of an old radio pulsar to date.