Singing in the Rain

© Madroon Community Consultants (MCC)

We have some wet but happy visitors to the Institute this week. Dan Stinebring (Oberlin College, USA) has brought three students with him for two weeks to work with the pulsar group. Here they are seen in front of the famous and historic Dwingeloo telescope, although in the stormy weather it was turned away from them in stow position. From left to right: Ben Izmirli, Dan, Keeley Hagenbuch, and Nora Rice.

Dan follows in the tradition of many radio astronomy luminaries who "spent time in Leiden in the sixties". Like them, he insists on practicing his budding Dutch on indulgent locals, which is much appreciated. He visited us for a year recently, and continues to enjoy his frequent trips to the Netherlands - especially ASTRON.

In the spirit of singing for his dinner, Dan will give a seminar for the pulsar group today: "Estimating Dispersion Delay in Pulsar Signals: Promises and Pitfalls". At 15:30 in the Auditorium. This is not a colloquium, but anyone is welcome to attend.

Brief description of the seminar: "High precision pulsar timing requires accurate removal of interstellar propagation delays. The largest of these, due to the dispersive nature of the interstellar plasma, is normally estimated from multi-frequency observations, although proposals to use single broad-band receivers are also being considered. I will present an analysis from a forthcoming paper (Cordes, Shannons, and Stinebring) that quantitatively estimates the average error incurred in both the multi-frequency and the broad-band approaches. There will be some introductory material to set the context for this analysis, but this talk will be mainly of interest to pulsar astronomers and students".