Green Bank Telescope discovers binary pulsar with 53-minute orbit

Radio observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1953+1844 (M71E) show it to have an orbital period of 53.3 minutes and a companion with a mass of ~0.07 M⊙. It is a faint X-ray source and located 2.5 arcminutes from the center of the globular cluster M71. This discovery suggests the existence of a population of millisecond pulsars with moderate mass companions and very short orbital periods.