088232

The temporary disappearance of radio emission from a pulsar is known as .nulling. The nature of nulling is not fully understood yet but it is considered as evidence of turning off the magnetospheric activity. A changed magnetospheric activity can affect the pulsar.s X-ray emission too in particular if these changes persist for some time. Nulling pulsars are usually too faint in X-rays to detect emission disappearance in the typically short nulling intervals. The nearby isolated PSR B1706-16 shows sufficiently long nulling intervals and may be X-ray bright enough to explore the nulling phenomenon in X-rays for the first time. The proposed short observations will establish the X-ray properties needed for planning a longer follow-up observation. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]