Related papers: Interplanetary spacecraft navigation using pulsars
A key challenge for starshades is formation flying. To successfully image exoplanets, the telescope boresight and starshade must be aligned to ~1 m at separations of tens of thousands of kilometers. This challenge has two parts: first, the…
Previous work in studying interstellar exploration by one or several probes has focused primarily either on engineering models for a spacecraft targeting a single star system, or large-scale simulations to ascertain the time required for a…
Pulsar timing is a technique that uses the highly stable spin periods of neutron stars to investigate a wide range of topics in physics and astrophysics. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) use sets of extremely well-timed pulsars as a Galaxy-scale…
Millisecond pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars where general relativity plays a strong role in the propagation of light from the neutron star to observer. The observed X-ray pulse shapes carry information on the mass, radius and…
Exoplanetary science has reached a historic moment. The James Webb Space Telescope will be capable of probing the atmospheres of rocky planets, and perhaps even search for biologically produced gases. However this is contingent on…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Accurate distances to pulsars can be used for a variety of studies of the Galaxy and its electron content. However, most distance measures to pulsars have been derived from the absorption (or lack thereof) of pulsar emission by Galactic HI…
The observation of neutron stars enables the otherwise impossible study of fundamental physical processes. The timing of binary radio pulsars is particularly powerful, as it enables precise characterization of their (three-dimensional)…
The pulsar timing is observed to be different from predicted by a simple magnetic dipole radiation. We choose eight pulsars whose braking index was reliably determined. Assuming the smaller values of braking index are dominated by the…
Star trackers are primarily optical devices that are used to estimate the attitude of a spacecraft by recognising and tracking star patterns. Currently, most star trackers use conventional optical sensors. In this application paper, we…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will make precise astrometric measurements that can be used to detect planets around nearby stars. Since observational time will be extremely valuable, it is important to consider how the choice of the…
Rotation-powered "recycled" millisecond pulsars are a variety of rapidly-spinning neutron stars that typically show thermal X-ray radiation due to the heated surface of their magnetic polar caps. Detailed numerical modeling of the…
Pulsar timing, i.e. the analysis of the arrival times of pulses from a pulsar, is a powerful tool in modern astrophysics. It allows us to measure the time delays of an electromagnetic signal caused by a number of physical processes as the…
Given sufficient sensitivity, pulsar timing observations can make a direct detection of gravitational waves passing over the Earth. Pulsar timing is most sensitive to gravitational waves with frequencies in the nanoHertz region, with the…
Highly accurate real-time localization is of fundamental importance for the safety and efficiency of planetary rovers exploring the surface of Mars. Mars rover operations rely on vision-based systems to avoid hazards as well as plan safe…
Over two hundred years ago Capt. James Cook sailed up Whitsunday Passage, just a few miles where we now sit, on a voyage of astronomical observation and discovery that remains an inspiration to us all. Since the prospects of our visiting…
More than 500 pulsars are regularly observed with the 76-m Lovell radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory. Precise positional and rotational parameters have been obtained from observations spanning between 6 and 34 years for over 300 of…
We present the discovery and timing solutions of five new pulsars by students involved in the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC), a NSF-funded joint program between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University…
We present a simple novel method for determining the orbital parameters of binary pulsars. This method works with any sort of orbital sampling, no matter how sparse, provided that information on the period derivatives is available with each…
The accuracy of astrometric observations conducted via a space-borne optical interferometer orbiting the Earth is expected to approach a few microarcseconds. Data processing of such extremely high-precision measurements requires access to a…