Parkes observations for project P427 semester 2008OCTS

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Timing the dozen pulsars discovered in P303 is ensuring high quality results: (a) the peculiarities (in position or projected acceleration) of all the 5 millisecond pulsars in NGC6752 suggested the presence of non thermal dynamics in the core, perhaps due to black-holes of intermediate mass; (b) the eclipsing pulsars in NGC6397 and NGC6266 appear promising laboratories for studying formation and evolution of exotic binaries. We propose to continue our timing project focusing mostly on NGC6752 at 20cm (in order to measure additional parameters useful to constrain the existence of a black-hole), NGC6397 at 10cm (for studying the eclipse region and orbital secular evolution) and NGC6266 at 20cm (for investigating the cluster's proper motion and dynamics and the eclipsing pulsar). We also request time for performing some tests of timing observations of these sources with the new back-ends available at Parkes (APSR, DFB3, 13x1024 digital filterbank) and for performing pilot observations of a new deeper than ever search of NGC6752, NGC6397 and of few other suitable clusters.