A special Bospub lunch for the pulsar group

© Gemma Janssen

The re-opening of the Dwingeloo Telescope by Nobel prize winner Joseph Taylor had an added bonus for the ASTRON pulsar group. As prof. Taylors work is inspiring to all of us, we invited him to a lunch at The Bospub(*) to get to know each other, and to discuss past, present and future pulsar work.

The group was treated to excellent stories by prof. Taylor and our visitor Dan Stinebring about disk space data-tape restrictions, coherent dedispersion of the very first millisecond binary pulsar observation, and early Arecibo pulsar observing.

We had nice conversations on local recent results like the new pulsar discoveries by the LOTAAS survey and the state-transitioning missing link pulsar J1023+0038. Also, the latest techniques in radio (amateur) astronomy were discussed, as well as the prospects of directly detecting gravitational waves with pulsars in the (hopefully) near future.

(*) The Bospub (public house in the woods) is an idyllic establishment in the woods near the Dwingeloo observatory.