Zhang et al. have used the Parkes radio-telescope to observe the
remnant of supernova SN 1987A (SNR 1987A), located in the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC), to search for periodic and/or transient radio
emission. They found no evidence of a radio pulsar in a periodicity
search and derived upper bounds to the flux density of any such source
at the tens of micro-janksy level. Four candidate transient events --
single pulses -- were detected, but with a wide range of dispersion
measures. At present it is not possible to conclude that any of these
are associated with a pulsar in SNR 1987A, but these candidates
encourage further observations. The figure above shows one such
candidate, with the pulse de-dispersed at the optimal Dispersion
Measure (839 cm^-3 pc, in this case). More details are available in
the paper, published in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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