Parkes observations for project P852 semester 2013OCTS

A recently-discovered magnetar near the Galactic Centre, J1745-2900, appears to be the source of both low-dispersion radio pulses (implying that it's nearby) and high-dispersion radio pulses (implying that it's far away). We believe that the low-dispersion radio pulses actually originate in the Earth's atmosphere, from particle cascades caused by high-energy gamma-rays from the magnetar. This hypothesis has a range of implications - including discrete subpulses from individual cascades, correlation with the Earth's magnetic field, and the near-field anisotropic nature of the radio emission - which we can test with the Parkes telescope. If successful, this would be the first detection of atmospheric particle cascades in this frequency range, the first radio detection of gamma-ray-initiated cascades at any frequency, and a demonstration of a potential new technique for gamma-ray astronomy.