#SpinsUk

Siyuan Chen (@UoBIGWaves) on using pulsar timing arrays to learn about astrophysics. Upper limits on the #GravitationalWave background can be interesting too! #SpinsUK

Nicolas Caballero on probing Solar System kinematics with pulsar timing. Planets effect timing residuals. Imperfect knowledge of masses and positions is a source of noise for gravitational wave detection, but we can use residuals to measure masses and positions! #SpinsUK

For fun, because he had some free time, Alberto searched the literature for predictions of the gravitational wave background from massive black hole binaries. Compared to current upper limits, most are consistent #SpinsUK

Alberto Sesana (@UoBIGWaves) on detecting #GravitationalWaves with pulsar timing arrays. Pulsar timing gives access to low frequencies—perfect for massive black hole binaries! We have evidence these exist, but not observational proof of them merging #SpinsUK

Liu: J1024-0719 can't be explained by standard binary evolution, need to invoke a tertiary companion #SpinsUK

Kuo Liu giving an informal talk on #EPTA and the Large European Array for Pulsars (LEAP). Data release 1 papers out. 85% of LEAP data processed #SpinsUK

Sotiris Sanidas on MeerTRAP, a real-time search for pulsars and fast radio bursts. Should be able to detect all fast radio bursts seen so far. Localisation on arcseconds scale #SpinsUK

Day 3 of #SpinsUK overlaps with the 1st day of the European Pulsar Timing Array #EPTA Meeting. Kicking off with @evanocathain on the @SKA_telescope. This should increase our catalogue of pulsars by over 10 times! Also, discover (at least one) pulsar–black hole binary

Keitel: No signal from GW170817 post-merger, which is not surprising. May be possible at design sensitivity. Glitch-type searches are computionally expensive, so triggered searches are a good option #SpinsUK

David Kietel (@UofGravity soon @UoPCosmology) on the search for long-duration transient #GravitationalWaves. Possible sources are remnants post-merger for binary neutron stars or neutron star glitches #SpinsUk

Can we detect these neutron star mountains other than through gravitational waves? @Emmanigma: probably not as they are so small (~millimetres)! #SpinsUK

The Astronomer's Telegram

@radioquiet Largest glitch observed last year (ATel #10939 http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=10939 via @astronomerstel). Glitch size follows power law and is correlated with time since last glitch #SpinsUK

On glitches @radioquiet: Glitches in Vela and Crab different. Large range of sizes in Crab, Vela more regular and Gaussian distributed. Spin-up has exponential time constant ~2 s for Vela, ~0.5–1.7 days for Crab (covariant with size of glitch?) #SpinsUK

On nuclear burning and #neutronstar cooling, @MarcellaJPW: Diffusive nuclear burning in envelope is important to model if we want to learn about interior from surface temperature #SpinsUK

Ralph Eatough on the search for pulsars in the Galactic centre. Finding one orbiting Sgr A* could allows us to measure the supermassive black hole's mass to the precision of 1 solar mass and test the no-hair theorem! #SpinsUK

Henryk Haniewicz (PhD at @uniofeastanglia) on how Shaprio delay needs to be taken into account when testing general relativity with pulsar binaries #SpinsUK

[1511.05481)] Article identifier not recognized

Highlights from day 1 of #SpinsUK: @_aris_k_ on how pulse profiles can change with time. Neat application of Gaussian processes for modelling (https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.05481

I've been busy with conferences about neutron stars. Last week was #NeutronStars in Lisbon, this week #SpinsUK at @uniofeastanglia