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1. Observation strategies
2. Publication policy

Jump to the October 14 teleconference minutes Oct14TeleConf

Observation strategies

We'll consider two aspects separately --

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Actually, there is an issue... there are more "timers" on the Consortium document than there are "searchers" on the PSC memo. If we "or" the two lists, then folks who have been building .par files will also get credit for searches. Also, Urumqi, from whom we never received anything we ever used, is a putative "timer" but certainly not a "searcher".

October 14 Teleconference

Teleconference

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to coordinate "Pulsar Timing for Fermi beyond Year 1" for the hundreds of pulsars monitored by the Australian and European radio telescopes.

Wednesday 14 October 2009: 11am Manchester / Noon Bonn-Bordeaux / 9pm Sydney.

Attending: Ben Stappers, Michael Kramer, Simon Johnston, David Smith. (Dave Thompson invited but couldn't make it).

Agenda:
1) Coordinating the observations and .par preparations for the hundreds of high Edot pulsars.

2) Continuation of the Pulsar Search Consortium activities.

3) Publication policy

4) Action items.

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CONCLUSIONS -- currently under revision by attendees.
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1) Coordination of observations and the making of timing solutions.

Lucas Guillemot will be asked to lead this activity. He will work with the specialists at the individual observatories: Patrick for Jodrell Bank, Ismael for Nancay, Simon for Parkes.

Simon will send Parkes TOAs for Fermi after observing sessions. Jodrell Bank will send TOAs for those pulsars whose timing solutions are enhanced by merging TOAs from observatories. For pulsars monitored only by Jodrell Bank only .par files will generally be sent.

TOAs used to build Fermi .par files will be kept in a private data base, accessible only to the active contributors of  these TOAs, to be used exclusively for gamma-related studies.

Lucas is asked to "rationalize" the observing strategies. For example, Nancay could focus on fainter pulsars requiring longer observations ; Parkes could eliminate some of the northern targets, or targets near the over-subscribed Galactic center. Since Jodrell Bank will presumably continue to time all northern pulsars anyway, Patrick can help Lucas determine which pulsars will best benefit from additional TOAs.

Michael insists on the complementarity of the Nancay<=>Jodrell Bank observations in order to obtain good coverage and accuracy. He believes that both institutions have strong arguments to justify these campaigns to their agencies.

Deadline for an improved Parkes observation list: December 1st, so as to be useful for the Dec 15th telescope time.

2) Continuation of the Pulsar Search Consortium.

David apologizes for having forgotten to invite Paul Ray to the meeting.

General satisfaction with the current status quo.

Ben comments that even if eligible, he expects people to sign papers only if they were active. Michael views that having observed a target justifies signature, even if discovery did not ensue.

3) Publication Policy

Of the papers we've written so far, there have been good things (e.g. CAT I and II papers with radio lead authors) and there have been painful things (e.g. the preparation of some of these papers).

Simon says that a lesson learned from 6P4 is that it needs to be more clear at the outset which co-authors intend to make contributions of substance. He and Patrick thought that 6P4 was nearly finished, only to discover that a vocal subset of the 200 co-authors wanted substantial changes. Solution is to have co-authors state their active interest earlier, and for the lead authors to outline the core ideas to them earlier.

After a short discussion of some of the sociological and idelogical elements involved, we agreed to try to continue to just make the best of it all. The LAT people recognize the need for quality radio pulsar work ; the radio people recognize the subtlety of LAT spectral and spatial analyses.

4) Action items:

i) David will write this summary.
ii) David will begin the re-write of the new MoU+PSC document to touch some of the above points. (Observation
strategy details are beyond the scope of the document).
iii) David will inform the rest of the consortium (namely, our GBT & Arecibo friends) of the austral-european intent.#Oct14TeleConf