Pulsars

Abstract

The pulsar story can be traced back to the mid-1960s, when a pioneering survey in the quest for new radio sources was conducted at Cambridge University in England. Some of the newly discovered sources seemed to change brightness from minute to minute, but only when they were observed close to the direction of the sun. This phenomenon is called scintillation and is produced when the radio waves pass through a patchy cloud of electrons. Such clouds will cause the radio waves to alter their path slightly, jiggling back and forth from minute to minute, which results in the scintillation of the radio source.