Radio Observations of Pulsars

AST 0206205PI NicePulsars是一种强烈磁化、快速旋转的中子星，是超新星爆炸后的坍缩残骸。它们是非常稳定的自然时钟，在某些情况下接近或超过最好的人造时钟的长期稳定性。目前已知的恒星有1000多颗，其中有几十颗都与另一颗星星有引力联系，其轨道速度高达光速的千分之一。由于这些和其他许多原因，对双星的高精度观测为恒星演化、引力物理、宇宙学、基础天体测量学甚至计时计量学的研究提供了独特的机会。本项目将扩展和改进一系列双星和毫秒双星的高精度计时测量，作为相对论效应的精细测试，以及在脉冲时间序列中寻找由于引力波通过而引起的扰动。他们还将在天空中搜寻新的脉冲星，特别是那些周期很短的脉冲星，他们将积累100多个慢脉冲星的计时数据，作为对其他波长观测者的服务，并研究脉冲星旋转的不规则性。

AST 0206205PI NicePulsars are strongly magnetized, rapidly spinning neutron stars, the collapsed remnants of supernova explosions. They are extraordinarily stable natural clocks, in some cases approaching or exceeding the long-term stabilities of the best man-made clocks. Well over 1000 pulsars are now known, and several dozen of them are gravitationally bound to another star, with orbital velocities up to a thousandth of the speed of light. For these and many other reasons,high-precision observations of pulsars offer unique opportunities for research in stellar evolution, gravitation physics, cosmology, fundamental astrometry, and even time-keeping metrology.This project will extend and improve a series of very-high precision timing measurements of binary and millisecond pulsars as refined tests of relativistic effects, and in the search for perturbations in pulse times series due to passing gravitational waves. They will also search the sky for new pulsars, particularly those with very short periods, and they will accumulate timing data for more than 100 slow pulsars, as a service to observers at other wavelengths and to study pulsar rotation irregularities.***