The frequency and time coverage of the different telescopes used in a study of PSR J0900−3144. The wide bandwidth spanned by the Parkes Ultra-Wideband Low receiver is apparent. (From Bhat et al. 2026)

Bhat et al. report the detection of a glitch in the millisecond pulsar (MSP) PSR J0900−3144, which is included in the European, MeerKAT and Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments. The dataset combines observations from the MeerKAT (South Africa), Nançay (France), Lovell (UK), and Murriyang telescopes, spanning a total baseline of approximately 14 years. This event represents only the third glitch detected in a MSP. Although smaller in amplitude than the other two, the glitch in PSR J0900−3144 is of a comparable order of magnitude. The updated MSP glitch rate is 0.0025 glitches per pulsar per year, which suggests it is likely current PTAs will detect another MSP glitch within five years. Using simulations, the team demonstrate that such small glitches can go undetected, especially in short datasets such as those from new PTAs, and can bias the inferred achromatic noise model parameters, potentially leading to the down-weighting of the pulsar in gravitational wave background searches. The image above shows the frequency and time coverage of the different telescopes used in the study. Each point represents an individual time of arrival (ToA) measurement. Each observation has one ToA per sub-band. The wide bandwidth spanned by the Parkes Ultra-Wideband Low receiver is apparent. Plotted on the x-axis is Modified Julian Day (MJD) — MJD 56000 corresponds to 14 March 2012, and MJD 60000 corresponds to 25 February 2023.