Pulsar transiting multiple fanbeams for first time at UTMOST

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UTMOST has a field of view of about 2 (NS) by 4 degrees (EW), which we will tile with multiple “fanbeams” — each fanbeam in the final configuration will be about 45 arsec EW and 2 degrees NS, and will be used to search for FRBs and to time pulsars.

Today we have successfully seen the Vela pulsar transiting through 5 of these fanbeams, laid out EW on the sky near the transit point on the meridian, and seen the pulsar moving through each fanbeam in turn as the Earth rotates. The observations were made from baseband data and post-processed.

vela.fanbeams
The pulsar Vela seen crossing through the inner 3 of 5 consecutive fan beams on the sky. Credit: Andrew Jameson.

This is an important milestone on the way to being able to achieve this in real time for many hundreds of fanbeams across the primary beam of the telescope.

Screenshot - 221114 - 17-42-22

Video of the pulsar passing through the fanbeams (10 MB) : MolongloTiledBeam.mov