So whats going on ???

Aaron Dodds
Aaron Dodds
Joined: 1 Feb 13
Posts: 8
Credit: 2102404
RAC: 0
Topic 196917

Hi,

Ive been part of E@H for the last few months and its been good. I just have a question about the project. Why have we last year found 16 new pulse's working out about 1 1/3 months and in 2013 we have found 0 ? Why is this ?

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 11889
Credit: 1828075752
RAC: 206010

So whats going on ???

Quote:

Hi,

Ive been part of E@H for the last few months and its been good. I just have a question about the project. Why have we last year found 16 new pulse's working out about 1 1/3 months and in 2013 we have found 0 ? Why is this ?

Perhaps the Science Thread would be better for this.
http://einsteinathome.org/community/forum/18

Benjamin Knispel
Benjamin Knispel
Joined: 1 Jun 06
Posts: 148
Credit: 4981579
RAC: 0

Hi Aaron, Arecibo is a

Hi Aaron,

Arecibo is a radio telescope so it has to be pointed and can only see a really small patch of the sky at once; to cover the whole sky you have to slew telescope, observe again, and repeat, and so on. With the searches for pulsars there are two main directions that the Arecibo Pulsar Survey is targeting: the inner Galaxy (many stars and many pulsars) and the outer Galaxy (less stars and less pulsars).

The main reason why we had so many discoveries in 2012 is that we were searching data taken by the Arecibo telescope when it was pointing in the inner Galaxy, while now we're mainly looking at the data from the outer Galaxy.

You can see that immediately in this plot, which I took from the PALFA webpage:

The plot shows a schematic of our Galaxy from above, the Sun is at the thick circle with a dot at the center in the top half (below the words "Orion-Cygnus"). Red dots are all known pulsars, blue dots are the pulsars found by the PALFA survey.

Arecibo on the Earth, thus at the position of the Sun in this scale, can basically see two wedges. One going to the bottom right, between 35 and 75 degrees in the angle scale centered on the Sun's position. This is the "inner Galaxy" direction I was referring to. See all the blue dots? Those are all pulsars discovered in PALFA data (not necessarily by Einstein@Home, though).

The other wedge is going to the top, between 170 and 210 degrees on the Sun-centered angle scale. You can easily see that are much fewer pulsar looking to the outer Galaxy just because the Sun is not at the center of the Galaxy and there are less stars looking outwards. Thus, there are less pulsars and also less PALFA discoveries.

Hope that helps, Cheers,
Benjamin

 

Einstein@Home Project

Darren
Darren
Joined: 13 Nov 09
Posts: 38
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^^^^^ +10 best reply ever

^^^^^ +10 best reply ever :)

Id been wondering the same thing.

Aaron Dodds
Aaron Dodds
Joined: 1 Feb 13
Posts: 8
Credit: 2102404
RAC: 0

Agreed ! easy to understand

Agreed ! easy to understand and helped me alot! thank you !!!!

Benjamin Knispel
Benjamin Knispel
Joined: 1 Jun 06
Posts: 148
Credit: 4981579
RAC: 0

Hi Aaron and Darren, glad

Hi Aaron and Darren,

glad I could help you to understand what's going on.

It's alway good to get feedback from our volunteers and it's great to see that you're keeping an eye on what's going on.

If you have more burning questions, please go ahead and post them in the appropriate forum, there'll alway be either forum moderators and/or project developers/scientists to help you.

Cheers,
Benjamin

 

Einstein@Home Project

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 11889
Credit: 1828075752
RAC: 206010

RE: Hi Aaron and

Quote:

Hi Aaron and Darren,

glad I could help you to understand what's going on.

It's alway good to get feedback from our volunteers and it's great to see that you're keeping an eye on what's going on.

If you have more burning questions, please go ahead and post them in the appropriate forum, there'll alway be either forum moderators and/or project developers/scientists to help you.

Cheers,
Benjamin

And this part: "If you have more burning questions, please go ahead and post them in the appropriate forum, there'll alway be either forum moderators and/or project developers/scientists to help you." is WHY Einstein is one of the BETTER Projects to crunch for!!! Always helpful people and the ones in charge ALWAYS keep an eye on what is going on in the trenches!!
THANK YOU!!!

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