| Description: | The biggest success of the Pulsar Busy Week was the completion of the first LOFAR observation with tracking HBA station beams. The LOFAR Pulsar Busy Week (Nov 17-21, 2008) was a coordinated effort in the commissioning of beam-formed (i.e. pulsar-like) modes, where a 'beam' is the coherent sum of all the tiles within a LOFAR station.
Above we show an observation of PSRB1919+21, the 'original' pulsar, with a test station of four tiles. Ultimately, each LOFAR core station will have 48 tiles. This is the first-ever HBA observation with successful station tracking and as such it is an important achievement for all LOFAR modes. In the two hours of the observation the source crosses 2 beam widths, and as can be seen from the folded profiles on the right we are now able to track the pulsar throughout this period. This puts the pulsar pipeline on track for on-schedule kick off of the LOFAR pulsar survey.
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