Parkes observations for project P816 semester 2012APRS

We propose to perform multiple 90--120 minute baseband observations of the Vela pulsar (PSR B0833--45) with the CASPSR (CASPER Parkes Swinburne Recorder) backend. The high bandwidth (~300 MHz at 20cm, 400MHz at 10cm) and detailed 8-bit sampling allow unprecedently high signal-to-noise (S/N) measurements of the Stokes parameters down to the scattering timescale for every single pulse. Further, the relatively long observations will yield the largest sets of high S/N single pulses (~240,000 at 10cm and ~120,000 at 20cm) providing the statistics needed to study tails of the phase-resolved flux distributions. Although the dataset will be large (~24 TB), we anticipate its high quality will make it of broad interest and have made provisions for long-term availability of both the raw and processed data.