Pulsar ALFA Survey Project Welcome to the Pulsar ALFA Survey page! The goal of the survey is to find not only a large sample of pulsars, but also rare objects that are useful for probing fundamental aspects of neutron star physics and testing theories of gravity and gravitational physics, among other goals. This page is for internal use of the Consortium only, so don't disseminate its address. For general information on our survey, here is our public page. The material archived here includes documentation, observation logs and pulsar detections and re-detections, as well as various miscellaneous stuff. Please help keep it up to date!

• Breaking News
  • 15 Oct 2012 the ALFA lid was left on by mistake; data is useless and is deleted.
  • 26 July 2011 - 6 Sep. 2011 ALFA is taken down; Beam 6 is repaired. Mock data
    from Beam 6 taken after 6 Sep. 2011 is converted as usual.
  • 12 June 2011 observations have no data from beam 5 because of raid disk failure.
  • 7 May 2011 observations are likely useless because Mock power
    was too low (J1952+26 wasn't seen in a pointing during that session).
  • ALFA Beam 6 is completely dead since 24 Mar. 2011. Mock data
    from this beam will be discarded until ALFA is repaired.
  • Beam 6 had only one polarization channel working from 3 Jan. 2011 to 24 Mar. 2011.
    Data from this period will be kept and converted as usual.
  • Mock data up to 28 Jan. 2010 have the wrong positions
    for the ALFA side beams in the psrfits main header as well as in psrfits rows
    due to a bug in the Mock software that was subsequently fixed. Positions
    for Beam 0 data are correct. Psrfits files created after the bug was fixed have
    HDRVER=3.43 or higher in the header.

• Documentation: Start here.
  • Sign-up page for observing: aka doing YOUR bit for the survey!
  • Candidates: please confirm!
  • Mock observing HOWTO: setting up and taking survey data.
  • The MySQL PALFA database: an introduction.
  • Python scripts to access the PALFA database.
  • ASP processing for QuickLook. Updated 24/08/06 (old)
  • Subversion: an introduction to the code repository.

• Results
  • New pulsars!
  • Re-detections of known pulsars: Precursor survey and Main survey.
    (Should be unified?)
  • Candidates: interesting but unconfirmed candidates. (Temporary storage only.)
  • Non-detections: known pulsars that were not seen in the survey.
    (TBD)
  • Scripts to access database at Cornell Theory Center: Browse database tables,
    or get PALFA pointings + Virtual Observatory images for one coordinate pair
    (links images--fast) or multiple coordinate pairs (downloads images--slow)
    

• PALFA Publications
  • Paper I. Survey Strategy and First Discoveries
  • Paper II. The young, highly relativistic binary pulsar J1906+0746

• Mock Spectrometer
  • How to convert and process Mock data
  • Summary of test observations
  • Dynamic spectra
  • psrfits2fil (converts from PSRFITS to SIGPROC filterbank format)
  • General info

• WAPP Correlator
  • alfasplit (splits interleaved dual-beam WAPP data files taken with ALFA.)

• Schedules and log files
  • PALFA observing sessions and sign-up.
  • Sessions, Notes and Logs. Please help keep this up to date.
  • Telecon minutes.

• Important Pointing Issues (added by JMW & JWTH)
  • WARNING: There appears to be an error with the positions written
    to the WAPP file headers. This has resulted in a rotation of 180 deg
    from the true position of the beams.
  • CAUTION: The feed will rotate by more than half a beamwidth when
    observing close to the zenith along the meridian. See the following
    plots by Phil Perillat: Beam rotation as a function of feed position from zenith.
    
  • CAUTION: When reobserving the same pointing position at a
    significantly different parallatic angle, the beams will not
    fall on top of each other, and their central positions may differ by
    as much as an arcminute!

• Data Transport Information
  • Disk drive info: As written at AO.
  • Disk drive info: As read at Cornell
  • Disk drive info: As archived at Cornell Theory Center

• Miscellaneous Stuff:
  • DM lists: Quick, Long
  • McGill meeting notes from May 2004.
  • Plots from 8th Aug 2004. (why?)
  • Galactic plane x-y plots of pulsars and simulations:
    old psrs, old psrs+simulation, old psrs+new psrs, old psrs+new psrs+simulation
  • Graphics: palfa logos
  • The ALFA blender celebrates the end of the 1906+07 discovery week (6MB avi | 2MB mpg)

chgrp palfa *; chmod 664 *  (or 775 for directories)

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Pulsar ALFA Survey Consortium Last Updated: