Pulsars and neutron stars/Telescopes involved in pulsar research

Radio telescopes

Observatory setup

In this section we describe the Parkes observatory in detail.

Observatory time standard

The maser system at Parkes does not produce a signal such as a 1 second tick. Instead it produces an accurate 5 MHz waveform. This waveform is read by the clock system (known as the Australia Telescope Distributed Clock, ATDC). The actual day, month and year of that clock are set manually when the clock is started and continually updated with IERSA data.