We present the results from an ongoing long-term monitoring of the 22 GHz H2O maser in W49N with the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope from February 2014 to September 2017. The unique Effelsbergs spectral line observation capability provides a broad velocity range coverage from −500 to +500 km s−1 with a spectral resolution better than 0.1 km/s. Following the strong major outburst in W49N in late 2013, we have started a long-term monitoring programme at Effelsberg. The major outburst feature (up to 80,000 Jy at VLSR − 98 km s−1) faded away by June 2014. However, we found that the site is still active with several high velocity outbursts (both blue and redshifted). Some features appear at extremely high velocities (up to ±280 km s−1) and show rapid flux variations within a 1-2 month period. This sub-year scale variability implies that the water masers could be excited by episodic shock propagation caused by a high-velocity protostellar jet.

We present a search for OH maser emission in galaxies hosting H2O masers with the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This survey is aimed at investigating the apparent rarity and/or possible mutual exclusion of megamaser emission from OH and H2O in the same galaxy. Our study establishes new and better upper limits on the OH maser luminosity. Our work duplicates the number of H2O masers searched for OH emission. No new maser detections have been found. OH absorption, both in the 1667 and 1665 MHz transitions, is instead detected in two galaxies of the sample, IC342 and NGG5793.

We present simultaneous multi-frequency observations of PSR J1822–2256 for the first time, utilizing the unique capabilities of upgraded Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (uGMRT). No emission is detected in about 10 % of pulses. At least two drift modes and a possibly third rare mode, occur for 66, 21 and 2 % pulses respectively (P3 ~ 17, 7.5 and 5 P0 respectively). The three drift modes and the nulls occur concurrently from 250 to 1500 MHz. Modal average profiles are distinct with their widths increasing with drift rate. These sub-pulse drift related profile mode-changes can provide independent probes of beam geometry and polar gap physics.

The high time resolution afforded by coherent dedispersion has enabled precision pulsar timing, detailed studies of pulsar morphology, and has led to conclusions about the radio emission mechanism. The advance of technology in the last 50 years has enhanced the capability of coherent dedispersion, now used for most pulsar observing, by nearly six orders of magnitude. Although coherent dedispersion is now done mostly in software, in “earlier days” several novel hardware devices for real-time processing were developed.

A superconductor of paired protons is thought to form in the core of neutron stars soon after their birth. Minimum energy conditions suggest that magnetic flux is expelled from the superconducting region due to the Meissner effect, such that the neutron star core retains or is largely devoid of magnetic fields for some nuclear equation of state and proton pairing models. We show via neutron star cooling simulations that the superconducting region expands faster than flux is expected to be expelled because cooling timescales are much shorter than timescales of magnetic field diffusion. Thus magnetic fields remain in the bulk of the neutron star core for at least 106 − 107yr. We estimate the size of flux free regions at 107yr to be ≲ 100m for a magnetic field of 1011G and possibly smaller for stronger field strengths.

The Large European Array for Pulsars (LEAP) is a European Pulsar Timing Array project that combines the Lovell, Effelsberg, Nançay, Sardinia, and Westerbork radio telescopes into a single tied-array, and makes monthly observations of a set of millisecond pulsars (MSPs). The overview of our experiment is presented in Bassa et al. (2016). Baseband data are recorded at a central frequency of 1396 MHz and a bandwidth of 128 MHz at each telescope, and are correlated offline on a cluster at Jodrell Bank Observatory using a purpose-built correlator, detailed in Smits et al. (2017). LEAP offers a substantial increase in sensitivity over that of the individual telescopes, and can operate in timing and imaging modes (notably in observations of the galactic centre radio magnetar; Wucknitz 2015). To date, 4 years of observations have been reduced. Here, we report on the scientific projects which have made use of LEAP data.

Charles Malcolm Walmsley passed away on 1 May 2017. Over a long and highly productive career, Malcolm made numerous and fundamental contributions to the science of the interstellar medium and star formation. These have recently been summarized elsewhere (Menten & Cesaroni 2017). Here I would like to describe some of his work related to masers.

Since the discovery of the first pulsar in 1967, over 2500 pulsars have been discovered. Pulsars enable a broad range of studies: from the study of the properties of the interstellar medium and of pulsar magnetospheres to tests of gravity in the strong-field regime and the characterisation of the cosmological gravitation wave background. These reasons are the main drive for searching for more pulsars. A blind pulsar survey, named SPAN512, was initiated with the Nançay Radio Telescope in 2012. Conducted at 1.4 GHz with a sampling time of 64μs and 500-kHz frequency channels, SPAN512 was designed to search for fast and distant pulsars in the Galactic plane. Here we describe the current status of the survey and present the latest discovery, PSR J2055+3829, a 2.08-ms pulsar in a black widow system.

In this proceeding paper, we introduce the recent results of Galactic maser astrometry by mainly focusing on those obtained with Japanese VLBI array VERA. So far we have obtained parallaxes for 86 sources including preliminary results, and combination with the data obtained with VLBA/BeSSeL provides astrometric results for 159 sources. With these most updated results we conduct preliminary determinations of Galactic fundamental parameters, obtaining R0 = 8.16 ± 0.26 kpc and Θ0 = 237 ± 8 km/s. We also derive the rotation curve of the Milky Way Galaxy and confirm the previous results that the rotation curve is fairly flat between 5 kpc and 16 kpc, while a remarkable deviation is seen toward the Galactic center region. In addition to the results on the Galactic structure, we also present brief overviews on other science topics related to masers conducted with VERA, and also discuss the future prospect of the project.

VLBI observations of SiO masers recover at most 40-50% of the total flux obtained by single dish observations at any spectral channel. Some previous studies seems to indicate that, at least, part of the lost flux is divided up into many weak components rather than in a large resolved emission area. Taking benefit of the high sensitivity and resolution of the HSA, we investigate the problem of the missing flux in VLBI observations of SiO maser emission at 7 mm in the AGB stars and obtain a high dynamic range map of IRC+10011. We conclude that the missing flux is mostly contained in many very weak maser components.

The Crab pulsar was first detected soon after the discovery of pulsars, and has long been studied for its unique traits. One of these traits, giant pulses that can be upwards of 1000 times brighter than the average pulse, was key to the Crab’s initial detection. Giant pulses are only seen in a few pulsars, and their energy distributions distinguish them from normal pulsed emission. There have been many studies over a period of decades to measure the power-law slope of these energy distributions, which provide insight into the possible emission mechanism of these giant pulses.

The 42-foot telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory monitors the Crab pulsar on a daily basis. We have single-pulse data dating back to 2012, containing roughly 1,000,000 giant pulses, the largest sample of Crab giant pulses to date. This large set of giant pulses allows us to do a range of science, including pulse-width studies and in-depth studies of giant-pulse energy distributions. The latter are particularly interesting, as close inspection of the high-energy tail of the energy distribution allows us to investigate the detectability of extragalactic giant-pulsing pulsars. Also, by calculating rates from these energy distributions, we may be able to shed light on a possible link between Fast Radio Bursts and giant pulses.

The overview of a Phased Array Feed (PAF) system and the early results with it on the 100 m diameter telescope at Effelsberg are presented in the paper.

We present radio continuum and water maser observations toward the high-mass star-forming region IRAS 23151+5912 from the VLA and VLBA archive, respectively. We detected a continuum source, which seems to be a hypercompact HII region. In addition, a water maser group about 4″ south from the continuum source was detected. We present preliminary results of the analysis of three observations epochs of the water masers, which are tracing an arc-like structure. However, its kinematics is quite complex, since while one section of the structure seems to be moving away from one center, another section seems to be approaching.

Since the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2008, the onboard Large Area Telescope (LAT) has detected gamma-ray pulsations from more than 200 pulsars. A large fraction of these remain undetected in radio observations, and could only be found by directly searching the LAT data for pulsations. However, the sensitivity of such “blind” searches is limited by the sparse photon data and vast computational requirements. In this contribution we present the latest large-scale blind-search survey for gamma-ray pulsars, which ran on the distributed volunteer computing system, Einstein@Home, and discovered 19 new gamma-ray pulsars. We explain how recent improvements to search techniques and LAT data reconstruction have boosted the sensitivity of blind searches, and present highlights from the survey’s discoveries. These include: two glitching pulsars; the youngest known radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar; and two isolated millisecond pulsars (MSPs), one of which is the only known radio-quiet rotationally powered MSP.

In this contribution, we have made use of the contemporary equation of states (EOSs) for the complete neutron star structure, and confronted them with one particular glitch constrain for the crustal moment of inertia (MOI). We find that with these EOSs, the radii of three millisecond pulsars selected by NICER: PSR J0437-4715, PSR J1614-2230, PSR J0751+1807, are all around 12.5 km. Also, a star with M ≲ 1.55M⊙ would fulfill the MOI calculation for glitch constrain with the latest neutron superfluidity density, and the glitch crisis might not be present.

The formation process of high-mass stars has puzzled the astrophysical community for decades from both a theoretical and an observational point of view. Here, we present an overview of the current theories and status of the observational research on this field, outlining the progress achieved in recent years on our knowledge of the initial phases of massive star formation, the fragmentation of cold, infrared-dark clouds, and the evidence for circumstellar accretion disks around OB stars. The role of masers in helping us to understand the mechanism leading to the formation of a high-mass star are also discussed.

Pulsars in relativistic binary systems have emerged as fantastic natural laboratories for testing theories of gravity, the most prominent example being the double pulsar, PSR J0737–3039. The HTRU-South Low Latitude pulsar survey represents one of the most sensitive blind pulsar surveys taken of the southern Galactic plane to date, and its primary aim has been the discovery of new relativistic binary pulsars. Here we present our binary pulsar searching strategy and report on the survey’s flagship discovery, PSR J1757–1854. A 21.5-ms pulsar in a relativistic binary with an orbital period of 4.4 hours and an eccentricity of 0.61, this double neutron star (DNS) system is the most accelerated pulsar binary known, and probes a relativistic parameter space not yet explored by previous pulsar binaries.