Daily Image
23-11-2010
DIGESTIF Simultaneously Observes Pulsars 7 Full Moons Apart
| Submitter: | Joeri van Leeuwen, Jason Hessels, Wim van Cappellen and APERTIF Team |
| Description: | In a demonstration of its revolutionary wide-field capabilities, the DIGESTIF phased array feed last week simultaneously detected two pulsars 3.8 degrees apart. In the image above, the cross hairs indicate the position of pulsars B0329+54 (right) and B0355+54 (left). They are separated by 7 times the size of the full moon, which is included for comparison away from its actual position. The insets at the bottom left show the folded profiles from the two sources, each repeated twice for clarity. The intensity variation in the gray scale plots are caused by interstellar scintillation. The observation ran for 4 hours, using a 6 MHz band around 1420 MHz. Westerbork as it currently stands can only simultaneously observe sources closer to each other than one full moon. Following on DIGESTIF's first pulsar observation only two weeks ago, this double detection showcases one of the strengths of APERTIF: the wide field of view. Today and tomorrow ASTRON hosts the APERTIF Science Coordination workshop, where investigators from many scientific fields discuss possible synergies between the various envisioned surveys and programs. |
| Copyright: | JvL |
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