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The purpose of this page is to detail for Masa, James, et al what the limitations are, make a list of modifications and/or additions to the pulsar Science Tools ordered by the pain-to-gain ratio of each item, to then be able to discuss with GSSC about what, if anything, should actually be changed.

Please note that Masa et al maintain a "pulsar tools do-list" at  http://glast.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/dev/psr_tools/status.html .

The topics

In approximate order of increasing pain-to-gain:

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There is nothing inherently wrong with Masa's concept of the pulsar science tools architecture and implementation. We have stacked Crab optical pulsar data over many epochs using the Jodrell monthly ephemerides that have only f0, f1, f2, and it works very nicely (ApJ 566 343-357 (2002)). An important element of the pulsar ST concept is that the user tailor his/her D4 file to the specific study being performed, which we have indeed done during ours studies. It works nicely, and it is a guiding principle in the conception of the A Web-based D4 creatormentioned above.

The "problems" (to the extent that there are any) are more on the side of the timing solutions that are going to be provided to us.  Piece-wise phase-coherent ephemerides can be made, and the radio astronomers are even willing to make them for us, since in any case they'll be doing a lot of solutions specifically for us. However... they also already have a lot of high-quality timing solutions in hand, that they will continue to extend into the future, independent of GLAST. At present, Science Tools can't use those -- we have to get custom ephemerides made. To make them ourselves, you need access to the radio TOA's, which they share sparingly.

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