Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Aug 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006iaujd...2e..36c&link_type=abstract
On the Present and Future of Pulsar Astronomy, 26th meeting of the IAU, Joint Discussion 2, 16-17 August, 2006, Prague, Czech Re
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We present here a summary of the Nançay pulsar instrumentation and the on going observational pulsar timing programs. The BON coherent dedispersor is able to handle 128MHz of bandwidth. It is made of a spectrometer, plus four data servers to spread data out to a 70-node cluster of PCs (with Linux Operating System). Dedispersion is done by applying a special filter in the complex Fourier domain. This backend has been designed in close collaboration with UC Berkeley. It benefits from the many qualities of the large Nançay radiotelescope (NRT, equivalent to a 94 m circular dish), which receivers were upgraded in 2000 : a factor of 2.2 sensitivity improvement was obtained at 1.4MHz, with an efficiency of 1.4K/Jy for a system temperature of 35K ; a better frequency coverage was also achieved (from 1.1 to 3.5GHz). The first two years of BON data acquisition demonstrates that the timing data quality is comparable with the Arecibo and Green Bank results. As an example, a Time Of Arrival (TOA) measurement accuracy better than 200ns (170-180ns) is obtained in only 30 seconds of integration on the millisecond pulsar PSR B1937+21. With this up to date instrumentation, we operate two main observational programs in pulsar timing with the Nançay antenna : 1) the radio follow-up of X- and gamma-ray pulsars for the building of a complete multi-wavelength sample and 2) the monitoring of both a millisecond pulsar timing array and a targeted list of binary or unstable pulsars for gravitational wave detection. Joining both list of targets, a total sample of 150 pulsars is then monitored regularly with a dense sampling in time.
Cognard Ismaël
Theureau Gilles
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