Daily Image
12-11-2010
Leave Some Room for Dessert: DIGESTIF Observes its First Pulsar
| Submitter: | Wim van Cappellen, Jason Hessels, Joeri van Leeuwen, APERTIF Team |
| Description: | The DIGESTIF receiver array, installed on one of the Westerbork 25-m dishes, is the demonstration hardware for the planned APERTIF system. APERTIF will revolutionize the use of Westerbork for wide-field imaging and pulsar/fast-transient surveys. Very recently DIGESTIF successfully observed its first pulsar, the first such detection with a dense phased array feed. The inset shows the signal strength of pulsar B0329+54 as a function of observation time and rotational phase (repeated twice for clarity). The sum of all the pulses detected within this 1-hour observation is shown at the top. The observation was centered close to 1420MHz, with a total bandwidth of 6MHz. The beam-forming was done using repurposed LOFAR hardware. The time variability of the signal is scintillation, which is expected given that the known scintillation bandwidth of this source is comparable to the observing bandwidth used here. With this first success in hand, further observations, e.g. using multiple beams, are planned. There is also the potential to use pulsar observations like this to better understand the system characteristics. |
| Copyright: | Astron |
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