The PULSE@Parkes Project: a New Observing Technique for Long-Term Pulsar Monitoring

Abstract

The PULSE@Parkes project has been designed to monitor the rotation of radio pulsars over time
spans of days to years. The observations are obtained using the Parkes 64-m and 12-m radio telescopes by
Australian and international high school students. These students learn the basis of radio astronomy and
undertake small projects with their observations. The data are fully calibrated and obtained with the state-ofthe-
art pulsar hardware available at Parkes. The final data sets are archived and are currently being used to
carry out studies of 1) pulsar glitches, 2) timing noise, 3) pulse profile stability over long time scales and 4) the
extreme nulling phenomenon. The data are also included in other projects such as gamma-ray observatory
support and for the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array project. In this paper we describe the current status of the
project and present the first scientific results from the Parkes 12-m radio telescope. We emphasise that this
project offers a straightforward means to enthuse high school students and the general public about radio
astronomy while obtaining scientifically valuable data sets.