China's solar telescope array in the making identifies pulsar blinking

CHENGDU, April 3 (Xinhua) -- A solar telescope array in southwest China, which will be the largest of its kind in the world after completion, has implemented the country's first pulsar detection system based on radio image sequences, and in the process identified a pulsar blinking.

Pulsars, or fast-spinning neutron stars, originate from the imploded cores of massive dying stars through supernova explosions. The "pulses" of high-energy radiation seen from a pulsar are due to a misalignment of the neutron star's rotation axis and its magnetic axis.

The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT), a solar radio imaging telescope that sits on the edge of China's Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, is composed of 313 six-meter-wide parabolic antennas circling a 100-meters-high calibration tower in the center.

With a diameter of one kilometer, the array will be the world's largest aperture synthesis radio telescope after completion. Its sunflower-like, swivelling antennas are designed to follow the sun in a bid to study solar eruptions and how they affect conditions around Earth.

Working in collaboration, the 313 sun-gazers will form a huge virtual telescope at a frequency range from 150 to 450 megahertz, to achieve high-precision imaging of solar events.

The DSRT has since March last year conducted a number of scientific observations and acquired a large number of solar activity images and spectral data.

Last Tuesday, using 146 antennas already integrated into operation, a team from the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences identified the blinking of a pulsar coded JJ0332+5434, which preliminarily verified the telescope's ability to detect this kind of celestial body in deeper space.