Re: ATM Focal plane strobe

[Bob Bond <rgb@ncube.com>]

I expected the effect you describe: the background would be reduced in 
brightness.  That was true, but it was not reduced enough to make the 
pulsar easily visible.  The biggest scope I tried was 30".  I was never 
able to see the pulsar other than fleetingly with averted vision.  That was 
just not enough to see if it is blinking.

The pulsar's wave form can be seen at (for example) 
http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1994ApJ...431L..43R 
This paper happens to show it in infrared - it looks much the same at most 
any wavelength from radio on up.

                 Bob

At 01:42 PM 8/20/99 -0700, Dwight Elvey wrote:

>"Howard Banich" <hbanich@teleport.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm not certain, but recall that the strobing was somewhere around 30 
> blinks
> > per second, the same rate that the pulsar rotates, and the strobing devices
> > were tunable to be able to match the rate precisely. Bob Bond and Dan
> > Petersen made the two devices, and I think we all came away from the effort
> > thinking we just needed more aperture.
>
>Hi
>  If you could see the pulsar without the shutter, you should have
>been able to see it with. In fact, you should be able to see
>it better. The background light is reduced but the light from
>the pular shouldn't be reduced as much. This all depends on the
>ratio of light to dark of the pular, though.
>Dwight