Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey

The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey was a late 1990s astronomical survey to identify pulsars. It was carried out with the Parkes Observatory MB20 multibeam receiver, a grid of thirteen feed horns that defined a pattern of thirteen beams, which was developed for 21-cm line surveys. Detecting pulsars requires teasing out pulsar-specific-characteristics of their relatively weak signals from among all the sky's sources of radio, the weak signals requiring far too much integration time to discern pulses. The receiver, in addition to gathering data on thirteen portions of the sky simultaneously, provided enough of a spectral energy distribution (SED) to allow detection of pulsar candidates by their spectral indexes. Analysis of the data extended into the 2000s. Hundreds of pulsars were identified.