After three years of intense work, a collaboration between the Center

for Computational Relativity and Gravitation [https://ccrg.rit.edu]

(CCRG) at RIT and the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy (IAR)

[https://www.iar.unlp.edu.ar] have released the first scientific

results of direct observation and extremely accurate measurement of

pulsar periods in the south america. Pulsars are highly rotating

neutron stars with intense magnetic fields that emit notably in

radiowavelenths. Those pulses carry information about the structure of

the neutron stars through interstellar media between the neutron star

and the earth.

 

A paper just appeared in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal

[https://www.aanda.org/component/article?access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361/201936525]

with results of the detection of a magnetar XTE J1810-197; a glitch(1)

in the period of the Vela pulsar (J0835-4510); and daily observations

of the millisecond pulsar J0437-4515; as some of the highlights of the

first collaboration article.

 

CCRG director, Manuela Campanelli and IAR director, Gustavo Romero

signed an agreement to exchange visitors, scientific projects and

data. Observations have been performed remotely from the PuMA-DEN lab

at CCRG by members of the collaboration and data is uploaded to a

dedicated storage computer for further analysis. New hardware and

software upgrades are programmed to increase the sensitivity of the

detections by a factor up to five.

 

This opens a new research area in RIT and giving more research choices

to undergraduate and graduate students from several MS and PhD

programs.

 

 

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(1) A glitch is a sudden change in the rotational period a the neutron

star, due to a sort of quake leading to changes in the pulsar

period. This is particularly noticeable in young pulsars, like Vela.