Contributors: Carlee Markle, Christinia Hollyday, Adrienne Brummett
Introduction/Overview
In this module, we attempted to observe different known pulsars of varying difficulty levels using the 20m radio telescope at Green Bank Observatory. We observed four different pulsars. Unfortunately, only one of our observations was actually able to detect the pulsar but we were able to fully analyze it so I would consider this project a success!
Observation Information
The observation information for each of our pulsars is actually identical. We used the Green Bank Observatory’s 20m radio telescope to observe each pulsar. We used the 20m’s special L-band receiver with the “HI” bandpass filter to remove human-made radio interference. One thing that is different about these pulsar observations than any of the other observations we have previously placed is that we chose the “track” path type since we aren’t actually trying to create a pretty image, we just need the data!
PSR 2021+51 (Moderate)
Telescope: Green Bank 20m
Frequency: 1395.0 MHz
Duration: 180 seconds
Integration time: 0.021 seconds
Didn’t work for pulsar analysis
Taken by Christina Hollyday
PSR 1133+16 (Moderate)
Telescope: Green Bank 20m
Frequency: 1395.0 MHz
Duration: 180 seconds
Integration time: 0.021 seconds
Didn’t work for pulsar analysis
Taken by Adrienne Brummett
PSR 1919+21 (Moderate/Difficult)
Telescope: Green Bank 20m
Frequency: 1395.0 MHz
Duration: 180 seconds
Integration time: 0.021 seconds
Didn’t work for pulsar analysis
Taken by Carlee Markle
PSR 0329+54 (Easy)
Telescope: Green Bank 20 m
Frequency: 1395.0 MHz
Duration: 180 seconds
Integration time: 0.021 seconds
Taken by Christina Hollyday
Funny enough, none of our observations were valid. Every single one failed 🙁 but it’s okay because we stole a classmate’s data. Their skynet username is nathed (thank you!).
PSR 0329+54
Here is the initial light curve for PSR 0329+54
As you can see, the initial light curve is very messy and noisy.
Here is the (cropped) periodogram for PSR 0329+54
Here is the period-folded light curve of PSR 0329+54.
Much nicer than before, correct? From this we obtained the sonography for our pulsar so you can actually hear it!
(I attempted to include this here but I could not figure out how to upload it)
To calibrate our second polarization channel to the first we utilized a radio observation that we took of Taurus A, aka the Crab Nebula. Here are the results after polarization, showing the difference between the two channels.
Since the difference (the black line) is a nonzero value at the peaks of our pulsar, our data is polarized. This implies the emission mechanism of our pulsar is non-thermal.
The emission mechanism of our pulsar is magnetic field-driven. It is by means of curvature radiation due to the hot spots of the neutron star that is the pulsar.
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