Related papers: Interplanetary spacecraft navigation using pulsars

PODIUM is a compact spacecraft navigation unit, currently being designed to provide interplanetary missions with autonomous position and velocity estimations. The unit will make use of Pulsar X-ray observations to measure the distance and…

Radio pulsars are fascinating and extremely useful objects. Despite our on-going difficulties in understanding the details of their emission physics, they can be used as precise cosmic clocks in a wide-range of experiments -- in particular…

We have embarked on a survey for pulsars and fast transients using the 13-beam Multibeam receiver on the Parkes radio telescope. Installation of a digital backend allows us to record 400 MHz of bandwidth for each beam, split into 1024…

I describe ongoing work on development of Bayesian methods for exploring periodically varying phenomena in astronomy, addressing two classes of sources: pulsars, and extrasolar planets (exoplanets). For pulsars, the methods aim to detect…

Pulsars are wonderful gravitational probes. Their tiny size and stellar mass give their rotation periods a stablility comparable to that of atomic frequency standards. This is especially true of the rapidly rotating "millisecond pulsars"…

In this invited talk, I first discuss the advantages and disadvantages of many probes for the magnetic fields of the Milky Way. I conclude that pulsars are the best probes for the magnetic structure in our Galaxy, because magnetic field…

We present the model for determination of pulsar distances or average electron distribution using a method similar to the widely used dependence of A$_V$ on distances in different directions. To have reliable pulsar distances, we have used…

Here we present a Bayesian method of including discrete measurements of dispersion measure due to the interstellar medium in the direction of a pulsar as prior information in the analysis of that pulsar. We use a simple simulation to show…

Searches for millisecond pulsars (which we here loosely define as those with periods $<$ 20 ms) in the Galactic field have undergone a renaissance in the past five years. New or recently refurbished radio telescopes utilizing cooled…

The trajectory of an interplanetary spacecraft can be used to test gravitation in the Solar System. Its determination relies on radio tracking and is limited by the uncertainty on the spacecraft non-gravitational acceleration. The addition…

We present high-precision timing of five millisecond pulsars (MSPs) carried out for more than seven years; four pulsars are in binary systems and one is isolated. We are able to measure the pulsars' proper motions and derive an estimate for…

Highly precise pulsar timing is very important for understanding the nature of a neutron star, and it can even be used to detect gravitational waves. Unfortunately, the accuracy of the pulsar timing is seriously affected by the spin-down…

The major programme for observing young, non-recycled pulsars with the Parkes telescope has transitioned from a narrow-band system to an ultra-wideband system capable of observing between 704 and 4032 MHz. We report here on the initial two…

Many astronomers have speculated that the solar system contains undiscovered massive planets or a distant stellar companion. The acceleration of the solar system barycenter can constrain the mass and position of the putative companion. In…

We are undertaking a high-frequency survey of the Galactic plane for radio pulsars, using the 13-element multibeam receiver on the 64-m Parkes radio telescope. We describe briefly the survey system and some of the initial results. PSR…

Due to the efforts by numerous ground-based surveys and NASA's Kepler and TESS, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of transiting exoplanets ideal for atmospheric characterization via spectroscopy with large platforms such as JWST and…

We have built and tested a compact, low-cost, but very-high-performance astronomical polarimeter based on a continuously rotating half-wave plate and a high-speed imaging detector. The polarimeter is suitable for small telescopes up to ~1 m…

Pulsars are often lauded for their (relative) rotational and radio emission stability over long time scales. However, long-term observing programmes are identifying an increasing number of pulsars that deviate from this preconceived notion.…

Long range observations in the field of astronomy have opened up our understanding of the Solar System, the Galaxy and the wider Universe. In this paper we discuss the idea of direct in-situ reconnaissance of nearby stellar systems, using…

Weakly magnetic, millisecond spinning neutron stars attain their very fast rotation through a 1E8-1E9 yr long phase during which they undergo disk-accretion of matter from a low mass companion star. They can be detected as accretion-powered…