Pulsar Searching at NAOC and FAST Site, China

Science Center A247

For 10 weeks during the summer of 2017, I, along with an undergraduate student co-worker, undertook pulsar searching research at the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guizhou Normal University (GZNU), and the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). Pulsars, which are strongly magnetized neutron stars, are remnants of main sequence stars that exhaust their fuel and explode in supernovae that emit periodic electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by radio telescopes. We worked with several researchers at NAOC to develop computer scripts that run a pulsar searching program named PRESTO (no relation to the Oberlin administrative software!). After vigorously developing, testing, and debugging our code by searching for existing pulsars in Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey data, we ultimately processed recent data from the Arecibo radio telescope using our scripts, in which we found the known pulsar J0509+08 among other plausible new signals. Our work gives us ample opportunity to further astronomical exploration in gravitational wave detection, the interstellar medium, and other galactic properties. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation through a grant to the NANOGrav collaboration, of which Professor Dan Stinebring of Oberlin is a member.