Long-term project observations for project P574 semester 2026OCTS_01
Abstract
We request time to observe 270 pulsars on a regular basis in order to achieve three main science goals. The first is to understand pulsars: how do they spin down and what disrupts this process, how and why their profiles vary with time, whether they precess or have planetary mass companions, in short all the things that make pulsar timing noisier than the perfect clock. Secondly we want to understand the interstellar medium of our Galaxy through repeated monitoring of dispersion measure, rotation measure and flux density variations in conjunction with scintillation parameters. Finally, we provide these data as a community service both to the high-energy community where we have strong collaborative links (particularly to Fermi) and to the radio pulsar astronomers generally through the CSIRO archive. The project is on-going since 2007, we are (co-)authors on 107 papers arising from the P574 data. The data have contributed to the PhD theses of students from Bordeaux, Manchester, Oxford, Stanford, and Swinburne. We are seeking long-term project status with a view to continuing the project into the SKA era.
