Optical Observations of the Nearby Isolated Pulsar PSR 0656+14 at the SAO 6-meter Telescope.

BVR data for the middle-aged radio pulsar PSR 0656+14 obtained on January 20-21, 1996 at the 6-m telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory are presented. The brightness of a star-like object coincident with the position of the VLA radio source in the Cousins B filter is B 25.1, with eff = 4448Å, adjacent to the HST F130LP long-pass filter. The relatively large V and R fluxes (3 or > 10-30 ergs cm-2 s-2 Hz-1) provide evidence that the optical emission of this pulsar is non-thermal up to 6600 Å. Most probably, in the UV-optical (BVR) spectral range, a power-law spectrum is super-imposed on the thermal-like emission of the neutron star surface, which could be related to the mechanism of the pulsar activity itself.