Pulsar Timing at the Deep Space Network

The 70-m DSN’s Deep Space Station antenna 14 (DSS-14) at Goldstone has recently been outfitted with instrumentation to enable pulsar searching and timing operation. Systems capable of similar operations are undergoing installation at DSS-63, and are planned for DSS-43. The Goldstone system is the first of these to become operational with a 640MHz bandwidth stretching from 1325–1965MHz. Initial results from the pulsar timing pipeline show short-term residuals of <100ns for pulsar B1937+21. Commissioning observations at DSS-14 to obtain a baseline set of time of arrival (TOA) measurements on several millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are currently underway.