On April 20 the digital pulsar machine developed at NTSC by a team led by Dr. Jintao Luo, saw its first light. The machine successfully observed several pulsars including a millisecond pulsar.
The observation was carried out by using NTSC’s 40-m radio telescope. PSR J0332+5434 was the first ever pulsar this pulsar machine saw. Then the machine did successful observations toward PSR J0437-4715(a millisecond pulsar), and PSR J0534+2200(an important pulsar for space navigation), and the brightest known pulsar PSR J0835-4510.
During this observation, the pulsar machine worked in the incoherent de-dispersion mode, with an available bandwidth of 2GHz and 1024 channels. The highest time resolution used in the observation was 16us.
First light: PSR J0332+5434
Millisecond pulsar J0437-4715, its spin period is about 5.7ms
Crab pulsar, which is an important pulsar for space navigation
PSR J0835-4510, the brightest known pulsar in the sky