Pulsars are one of the most enigmatic celestial objects studied by astronomy. These beacons are the lighthouses of the Universe. Pulsars rotate at incredible speeds, emitting a regular clocklike signal.

The National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is a premier tool for studying pulsars, thanks to its sensitivity at detecting these distant objects. A new $1.3 million award from the NSF will develop a powerful new system for capturing these observations in real-time, combining pulsar observations and cyclic spectroscopy in the ultra-wideband. The Green Bank Observatory is the first in the world to combine all of these aspects at once, in one robust observation processing system, in real-time.