News |
Pushchino astronomers at the International Pulsar Symposium
30/12/2024
The International Pulsar Symposium was held in Guiyang, China, from December 12 to 17, 2024. Astronomers from all over the world gathered there «to discuss the current situation of pulsar observations and our present understanding of pulsar physics».
The first two days of the conference were devoted to reports on the discoveries of new pulsars and transients on different telescopes in different frequency ranges. In the announcement of the conference our BSA LPI radio telescope it was ranked among the largest newly built telescopes in the world: «FAST, LOFAR, MeerKAT, and the Russian Large Phased Array», which have recently achieved remarkable results in the field of pulsar discovery and research.
The Pushchino Observatory was represented by five people at the conference.
The head of the BSA-Analytics Sergey Tyul'bashev spoke at the conference as an invited speaker.
Vasily Beskin, an employee of the LPI, also made an invited presentation. Of the scientists working in Russia,
there were two more young employees from V. Beskin's group.
| In the photo, in the first row, there are three doctors of sciences from the Pushchino Observatory and one from the LPI: | |||
| Smirnova Tatiana (1th from the right), | |||
| Malofeev Valery (7th from the right), | |||
| Our young employees are in the second row: |
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| Timirkeeva Maria (5th from the right), | |||
| Brylyakova Helen (10th from the left). | |||
| Leading experts in the front row: |
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| — | Conference organizer, Head of the NAOC (National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences). Under his leadership, about 700 pulsars have been discovered at FAST. | ||
| — | The oldest participant of the conference (born in 1942), he has been working on pulsars since their discovery in 1969. About 1500 pulsars have been discovered under his leadership. Created the ATNF Pulsar Catalogue. | ||
| George Hobbs, Australia (6th from the left) | — | Head of the pulsar group at the Parks Observatory. Together with Dick Manchester, he is the creator of ATNF Pulsar Catalogue. | |
| Dunc Lorimer, USA (4th from the right) | — | He opened the first FRB in 2007. | |
| Michael Kramer, Germany (8th from the right) | — | Director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. | |
Reports of our participants
| Tyul'bashev Sergey | — | «Search for pulsars and transients by the Large Phased Array» (invited presentation) |
| Malofeev Valery | — | «Detection of radio emission from three gamma-ray pulsars at the frequency 111 MHz» |
| Smirnova Tatiana | — | «Search for weak components in the radio emission of pulsars at a frequency of 110 MHz» |
| Timirkeeva Maria | — | «On the evolution of magnetic inclination angles in the radio pulsars with emission outside the radio» |
| Brylyakova Helen | — | «Search for RRAT on three years of data with LPA» |
| — | «Accelerating potential and secondary plasma density profile in orthogonal pulsars magnetosphere» (invited presentation) | |
| — | «To the statistics of radio pulsars» |
Excursion to the FAST.
Of the six days of the conference, one day was devoted to a FAST ride (150 km from Guiyang). It is the world's largest filled—aperture telescope, with a diameter of 500 meters (FAST — Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope). The telescope was commissioned in the fall of 2016, and more than 185 million dollars were spent on its construction.
It was at that time that our BSA-Analytics project was launched. Launching your the first test search for pulsars on an old laptop with a broken keyboard, we were afraid that now the Chinese would finish building FAST, and they would overtake us :) We were overtaken. But a lot has changed since then, in terms of the number of open transients until very recently, we occupied the first place in the world, and only at the end of 2024 the Chinese overtook us.
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The first photo shows the conference faculty, who have reached the top of FAST. Below is our delegation with DeJiang Zhou, an employee of the JinLin Han group, who accompanied and helped our delegation, and with Andrei Timokhin (sitting), our countryman, who has been working in Poland for many years.
The FAST photos are not of very good quality because they were taken on a film camera by FAST employees. It's amazing that such cameras still exist. The fact is that it is forbidden to carry almost everything on FAST — phones, any electronic devices, lighters, payment cards... They are carefully inspected in several stages. Things remain in special chambers at the site at the foot of the mountain. In order for the camera to close and open, you just need to look at it — recognition occurs by the iris of the eyes.
Before enjoying the beautiful view, the tourists had to climb about 700 steps — they are visible in the photo on the right. The photos on the right are taken from the Internet.
NAOC Workshop
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There were also some surprises. NAOC is the National Astronomical Observatory of China. Located in Beijing. Guiyang is a city in southern China, 2,000 km away. from Beijing (three hours by plane). Our delegation flew from Moscow to Guiyang via Beijing. There they were unexpectedly invited to give lectures at a seminar at the Beijing Astronomical Observatory. Since no one had warned them about this, they had to read their reports prepared for the conference. It was a good rehearsal for the youth. In the photo, Sergey Tyul'bashev shows the Chinese the beauty of our Large Phased Array. We hope they enjoyed it too :) |