Description |
Pulsars are particularly interesting objects that are the compact remnants of very massive stars that ended their lives in highly energetic events called supernova explosions. These objects are city sized (about 10 to 15 kilometres in diameter) and rotate relatively fast (up to a couple of hundred times per second). They emit electro-magnetic radiation (read light) from an area near their poles. Whenever the light cone emitted from one of these regions points into the direction of the Earth, we can detect this as a short pulse, hence the name pulsar. At the moment we know about 2300 of these objects. However, most pulsars have only been looked at at certain limited frequencies. In our current work we want to extend this by a large amount and measure about a quarter of them at two less common frequencies. This is important to understand how this emission depends on frequency and how it is created in the first place.
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