The High Time Resolution Universe: Low-Latitude Survey Data

Brief description

The Parkes High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) Legacy Survey is a comprehensive radio survey of our own Milky Way galaxy and beyond, led by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology. Over a 6 year period (from 2008 to 2013) the survey has, and will continue to, discover astrophysical objects such as pulsars (rapidly rotating neutron stars), rotating radio transients and potentially sources of gravitational waves. The survey has exceptional sensitivity to short-duration extragalactic radio bursts, or millisecond pulsars, resulting from the substational increase in frequency resolution compared to previous surveys.

Full description

The HTRU Survey strategy is to map the radio sky in three Galactic regions; at high-latitudes, mid-latitudes, and low-latitudes. The Low-latitude region promises to reveal the largest number of pulsars and also the most compact binary systems. However, here we also encounter the largest amount of interstellar medium between the Earth and the pulsar.

Survey parameters for the Low-latitude Survey:

• Region/sky coordinates: (Galactic) -80° < +30° and |b| < 3.5°
• Time of each observation: 4300 seconds
• Frequency Band: 340 MHz
• Frequency Bandwidth: 390 kHz
• Sampling time: 64 micro-seconds
• Number of channels: 870
• Data length (samples) 67108864 (64 Megasamples)
• Data per beam: 1.0 Gigabytes
• Total Data: 250 Terabytes

Observations/Data Collection:

Data is acquired using the Parkes 21-cm Multi-beam Receiver on the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope. The Berkeley-Parkes-Swinburne-Recorder (BPSR) system consists of 26 digital spectrometers connected to 13 server class workstations that format the data and write it to disk. Further processing is currently being carried out at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing via the Swinburne Pulsar Portal. The project is ongoing with an expected completion date of 2015.

Related Papers:

View Collection Record:"High Time Resolution Universe Legacy Survey: TheData"

Data access:
Raw data can be accessed via CSIROs Data Analysis Facility - P630 observation dataset. Processed data can be accessed via the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing's Swinburne Pulsar Portal. Metadata descriptions of individual P630 observing semeters can be viewed in;

• Research Data Australia, by selecting the P630 - The High Time Resolution Universe Activity record to the right, and the accompanying CSIRO Parkes observations collection datasets.
• CSIRO's Data Archive Facility.