Adding this here as a separate (quite niche but important, and seemingly overlooked) topic.
For a bit of background: the Murryiang (Parkes) telescope will soon have a new cryogenically cooled phased array feed (the CryoPAF) installed on it, replacing and improving on the capabilities of the legacy 21-cm Multibeam receiver. Among its many scientific use cases (e.g. pulsar timing, FRB detections, HI and OH spectral line studies, VLBI with ASKAP), this new instrument will be the premier pulsar-searching instrument in Australia.
Pulsar science is one of the key domains of the SKA, through long-term monitoring of young/slow pulsars (links to topics #1, #4 & #7), testing fundamental physics with relativistic binary pulsars (i.e tests of GR and nuclear matter -- topic #3), and gravitational-wave detection via the SKA Pulsar Timing Array (PTA; links to topics #2, #6 & #8). While pulsar searching is also a key aim of the SKA, the vast majority of the pulsars it discovers will only be detectable by the SKA and similarly large, extremely oversubscribed telescopes. If the SKA operates in a similar fashion to MeerKAT, then the chosen pulsar samples for these key science goals will be locked in place quite early on. As a result, the best way to ensure the overall success of these aims is to maximise the known pulsar population with our existing instruments before the SKA becomes operational.
We have about 5-ish years between now and the SKA being operational. This is the perfect time frame to conduct a deep pulsar survey of the Galactic plane using the CryoPAF with the ultimate end goal of finding the pulsars that the SKA will study. A CryoPAF survey that covers the same area of sky as the Parkes High-Time Resolution Universe Medium-Latitude survey (3 to 15 degrees above/below the Galactic plane) with 2 hour (instead of 15-minute) long pointings would discover > 1000 new pulsars and could easily be completed within 4 years.
Such an undertaking would require substantial collaboration between CSIRO and university-based researchers/students. But as far as I can tell, neither CSIRO nor any university-based groups have any interest in ensuring such a project 1. actually occurs, and 2. succeeds. It does not appear anywhere in the ATNF of the Future planning documents, and would be an enormous missed opportunity for Australia were this survey not to take place. It could potentially be quite embarrassing if it were instead co-opted by a team based outside of Australia. After all, why build this instrument for an Australian telescope if you weren't going to make full use of it?
Adding this here as a separate (quite niche but important, and seemingly overlooked) topic.
For a bit of background: the Murryiang (Parkes) telescope will soon have a new cryogenically cooled phased array feed (the CryoPAF) installed on it, replacing and improving on the capabilities of the legacy 21-cm Multibeam receiver. Among its many scientific use cases (e.g. pulsar timing, FRB detections, HI and OH spectral line studies, VLBI with ASKAP), this new instrument will be the premier pulsar-searching instrument in Australia.
Pulsar science is one of the key domains of the SKA, through long-term monitoring of young/slow pulsars (links to topics #1, #4 & #7), testing fundamental physics with relativistic binary pulsars (i.e tests of GR and nuclear matter -- topic #3), and gravitational-wave detection via the SKA Pulsar Timing Array (PTA; links to topics #2, #6 & #8). While pulsar searching is also a key aim of the SKA, the vast majority of the pulsars it discovers will only be detectable by the SKA and similarly large, extremely oversubscribed telescopes. If the SKA operates in a similar fashion to MeerKAT, then the chosen pulsar samples for these key science goals will be locked in place quite early on. As a result, the best way to ensure the overall success of these aims is to maximise the known pulsar population with our existing instruments before the SKA becomes operational.
We have about 5-ish years between now and the SKA being operational. This is the perfect time frame to conduct a deep pulsar survey of the Galactic plane using the CryoPAF with the ultimate end goal of finding the pulsars that the SKA will study. A CryoPAF survey that covers the same area of sky as the Parkes High-Time Resolution Universe Medium-Latitude survey (3 to 15 degrees above/below the Galactic plane) with 2 hour (instead of 15-minute) long pointings would discover > 1000 new pulsars and could easily be completed within 4 years.
Such an undertaking would require substantial collaboration between CSIRO and university-based researchers/students. But as far as I can tell, neither CSIRO nor any university-based groups have any interest in ensuring such a project 1. actually occurs, and 2. succeeds. It does not appear anywhere in the ATNF of the Future planning documents, and would be an enormous missed opportunity for Australia were this survey not to take place. It could potentially be quite embarrassing if it were instead co-opted by a team based outside of Australia. After all, why build this instrument for an Australian telescope if you weren't going to make full use of it?