Parkes observations for project P630 semester 2009APRS_14

We propose to carry out the most ambitious and comprehensive all-sky survey for pulsars and transient sources to date. Using the 20cm multibeam and a new digital filterbank array this survey will create a petabyte digital record of the sky that can be data mined in the future and used to search for relativistic binary and millisecond pulsars, RRATs, and extragalactic radio bursts. The survey should discover 100s of new millisecond and normal pulsars and help define the lower limit to pulsar periods, test theories of relativistic gravity, find transients and provide pulsars for gravitational wave detection. With all the hardware in place, and our first new pulsar discovery made, we request a substantial time allocation this semester.

本研究拟开展迄今为止规模最宏大、覆盖最全面的全天域脉冲星（pulsars）与暂现源（transient sources）巡天项目。本项目将借助20厘米多波束系统与新型数字滤波器组阵列（digital filterbank array），获取全天域的拍字节（petabyte）级数字观测记录，以供未来开展数据挖掘，并用于搜寻相对论性双星脉冲星（relativistic binary pulsars）、毫秒脉冲星（millisecond pulsars）、RRATs以及河外射电暴（extragalactic radio bursts）。本次巡天预计将发现数百颗新的毫秒脉冲星与常规脉冲星，有助于确定脉冲星周期的下限、检验相对论引力（relativistic gravity）理论、探测暂现源，并为引力波探测提供可用脉冲星。目前所有硬件设备均已就位，且我们已取得首批新脉冲星的发现成果，因此本课题组申请本学期分配充足的观测时长。