4 ms·
I don't understand this sentence: "During this time, we have accounted for every single one of the neutron star’s 116 billion rotations" Isn't this pulsar just
by idlewords 11y ago
I don't understand this sentence: "During this time, we have accounted for every single one of the neutron star’s 116 billion rotations"
Isn't this pulsar just being watched by one radio telescope in Australia, which presumably can't point at it 24 hours a day?
- lisper 11y agoGood question. You don't need to directly observe every rotation in order to "account" for it. The drift rate for a pulsar is extremely low, so as long as you sync up often enough that the error is much smaller than one cycle you can be confident that you've counted every one even though you haven't directly measured them all.
- arethuza 11y agoIf it's a circumpolar star then it won't set - e.g. Polaris doesn't set here in the UK.
- hugh4 11y agoTrue but I think lisper's answer is correct since I'm sure they haven't kept the Parkes radio telescope trained on one target for eleven years.