Determination of mass limits around pulsars at 10 and 90 mu m with ISO

We present mid-infrared photometric results obtained with ISOCAM and ISOPHOT on 3 millisecond pulsars and 3 ordinary radio pulsars. No detections have been obtained for the three ms pulsars nor the two more distant radio pulsars. A faint enhancement in the brightness map at 90 mum is seen at about 5 arcsec from the radio position of PSR J0108-1431, the nearest radio pulsar (Tauris et al, 1994), located at 85 pc from us. We conclude that this 90 mum emission, amounting to about 12 mJy, originates either from material orbiting the pulsar or from cirrus on the line of sight. We deduce the upper limits on mass of dust orbiting this pulsar and on the mean temperature of grains