Amateur Radio Astronomy

Amateur Pulsar Radio Astronomy

The aim of this site is to encourage others to try detecting pulsars and to show that it may not be as difficult or as expensive as you may think.
In this I have had the support of amateurs who have access to large dishes from which data was collected enabling me to extrapolate performance to less expensive equipment.

The pulsar plot of pulsar B0329+54 below was collected over a 2.5 hour period using a twin 17-element Yagi feeding a triple RTL SDR receiver.



B0329+54 Fold plot, at position 714 (0.5ms scale): 2hr10min record, SNR=4.4, rms noise ~ 0.006deg K

Test 1. Shows 1st half (red) + 2nd half (blue) data overlap correlation

Test 2. 2-period fold overlapped

Test 3. 3-band fold overlapped (red-609MHz, blue-611MHz, green-613MHz; 2.4MHz BW)

Test 4. Pulse shape/Width comparison with 25m dish pulse (blue) by M Klaassen

Test 5. Scintillation characteristic

Test 6a. Period search - increase by 1ppm, calculated -7bin shift confirmed

Test 6b. Period search - decrease by 1ppm, calculated +7bin shift confirmed

Test 7. Dispersion check - factor 2 over-dispersed; pulse shift/spread and amplitude reduction confirmed

The Ultimate Test. Positive and negative stepped dispersion of a real pulsar pulse confirmed

Integrated pulsar plot of seven days observations - Final Signal-to-Noise ratio = 8.7 (Contributions - 3.3, 3.4, 4.9, 3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.5)


Pulsar Detection White Papers


Note: Due to excessive demand and pdf-liking bots my web page has been archived twice.
For bona-fide users I have had to modify the pdf document links by adding a space before the .pdf extension.
To download wanted documents successfully, you need to remove this space in your browser window.
My apologies for the inconvenience.