Last Updated: 23 July 2019

The detection of pulsars is one the most challanging and rewarding activity for an amateur radio station .

The successfull achievement of this goal involves all possible aspect of amateure radio pushing all details to the limit and helping, therefore, to have state of the art set-up !

I was infected form the "pulsars virus" many years ago during my early university study when I had the honor to meet with Prof. Gianfranco Sinigaglia ( I4BBE ) one of the fathers of Italian Radio Astronomy and one of the designers of the radiotelescope " Croce del Nord" that is still in operation in Medicina ( Bologna ).

Only recently ( February 2017 ) I was able to achieve this exciting result and this happened thanks to EME ( Earth Moon Earth ) activity that allowed to fine tune all my equipment and to meet other people of the EME WW community that helped a lot with their guidance,  suggestions and inspiration. 

A small "Pulsar Working Group" with Andrea IW5BHY,  Nando I1NDP and  Hannes OE5JFL  was also established to exchange experiences and information.

Andrea IW5BHY was instrumental to open the door for Pulsars detection as he wrote the basic blocks of software that allowed the use of the professional package PRESTO ( http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~sransom/presto/ ) .

 

  ------> Click here to download paper with details on Pulsars receiving techniques

 

This the list of Pulsars detected :

 

 

 

Here are details on set-up used :

 

 

 

 

B0329+54 DETECTION @ 1297 Mhz

 

 

 

  

 

B0329+54 DETECTION @ 409 Mhz

 

 

 

 

 

B1642-03 DETECTION @ 1303 Mhz

 

 

 

B1933+16 DETECTION @ 1303 Mhz

 

 

 

B1929+10 DETECTION @ 1303 Mhz

 

 

 

B2020+28 DETECTION @ 1303 Mhz

 

 

B0950+08 DETECTION @ 1330 Mhz

 

 

 

B2016+28 DETECTION @ 1303 Mhz

  

B1133+16 DETECTION @ 1330 Mhz

 

B1749-28 DETECTION @ 1303 Mhz

 

B2045-16 DETECTION @ 1303 Mhz

B0823+26 @ 1304 Mhz

  NOTE : SNR was measured with BestProfile ( please see downloads page ) and PSRCHIVE. The pulse profile is exactly the same but the SNR values differs.

               This difference still needs to be calarified. 

 

 

B0450-16 DETECTION @ 1304 Mhz

NOTE : SNR was measured with BestProfile ( please see downloads page ) and PSRCHIVE. The pulse profile is exactly the same but the SNR values differs.

               This difference still needs to be calarified.