  We study the cooling of isolated neutron stars with particular regard to the
importance of nuclear pairing gaps. A microscopic nuclear equation of state
derived in the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach is used together with compatible
neutron and proton pairing gaps. We then study the effect of modifying the gaps
on the final deduced neutron star mass distributions. We find that a consistent
description of all current cooling data can be achieved and a reasonable
neutron star mass distribution can be predicted employing the (slightly reduced
by about 40\%) proton 1S0 Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) gaps and no neutron
3P2 pairing.
