Related papers: How can we distinguish transient pulsars from SETI…
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has traditionally focused on the detection of narrowband electromagnetic beacons. However, terrestrial technology is increasingly evolving toward distributed, low-power, wideband digital…
Rotating Radio Transients (RRATs) are a new class of neutron stars discovered through the emission of radio bursts. Eleven sources are known up to now, but population studies predict these objects to be more numerous than the normal radio…
We present a study of the detectability of transient events associated with galaxies for the Gaia European Space Agency astrometric mission. We simulated the on-board detections, and on-ground processing for a mock galaxy catalogue to…
We have monitored a large sample of millisecond pulsars using the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope in order to compare their radio emission properties to the slowly rotating population. With some notable exceptions, our findings suggest…
We consider interstellar scintillations as a cause of intermittency in radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). We demonstrate that scintillations are very likely to allow initial detections of narrowband signals from distant…
The analysis of weak variations in the energetic particle flux, as detected by neutron or muon monitors, can often be considerably improved by analysing data from monitor networks and thereby exploiting the spatial coherence of the flux. We…
Most violent and energetic processes in our universe, including mergers of compact objects, explosions of massive stars and extreme accretion events, produce copious amounts of X-rays. X-ray follow-up is an efficient tool for identifying…
Recent observations of changes in radioactive decay rates associated with the annual variation of the Earth-Sun distance, with solar rotation, and particularly with solar storms, suggest that radioactive decay rates may be responding to…
This tutorial is an introduction to techniques used to characterize the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets. We intend it to be a useful guide for the undergraduate, graduate student, or postdoctoral scholar who wants to begin research in…
The detection and characterization of Earth-like planet is approaching rapidly thanks to radial velocity surveys (HARPS), transit searches (Corot, Kepler) and space observatories dedicated to their characterization are already in…
Perytons are terrestrial signals that exhibit dispersion measure (DM) similar to pulsars. In trying to identify terrestrial sources of such perytons, investigation into signals from airborne equipment (aircraft), RFI emissions from…
A few members of the recently discovered class of long-period transients have been identified as binaries with white-dwarf primaries. In most cases, however, electromagnetic data are inconclusive, and isolated magnetars or compact binaries…
We demonstrate a new technique for detecting radio transients based on interferometric closure quantities. The technique uses the bispectrum, the product of visibilities around a closed-loop of baselines of an interferometer. The bispectrum…
Emission spectrum is calculated for a weak axisymmetric pulsar. Also calculated are the observed spectrum, efficiency, and the observed efficiency. The underlying flow of electrons and positrons turns out to be curiously intricate.
Space missions have produced an incredibly large database on pulsating stars. The light curves via the frequency content contain a detailed description of each star. The critical point is the identification of modes, especially in the…
Both neutron stars and strange stars are capable of supporting fast rotations observed in pulsars. On the basis of this it has been argued that some of the pulsars could be strange stars. We investigate whether strange stars can sustain…
The ESA Gaia satellite scans the whole sky with a temporal sampling ranging from seconds and hours to months. Each time a source passes within the Gaia field of view, it moves over 10 CCDs in 45 s and a lightcurve with 4.5 s sampling (the…
Astronomical transients are intrinsically interesting things to study. Fast optical transients (microsecond timescale) are a largely unexplored field of optical astronomy mainly due to the fact that large optical telescopes are…
The study of transient and variable low-frequency radio sources is a key goal for LOFAR, with an extremely broad science case ranging from relativistic jets sources to pulsars, exoplanets, radio bursts at cosmological distances, the…
Exoplanets, short for `extra solar planets', are planets outside our solar system. They are objects with masses less than around 15 Jupiter-masses that orbit stars other than the Sun. They are small enough so they can not burn deuterium in…