The Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey - pulsar discovries

The CRAFTS mode (drfit-scan with an angle plus high-cadence CAL) provides efficient, super Nyquist-sampled coverage of large sky area. It is now a relatively mature, well-tested observing mode supported by the telescope and is accompanied by extensive, existing calibration pipelines.

The CRAFTS observing mode consists of a drift map where the telescope is held fixed at the meridian while the sky drifts past. The receiver is rotated at an angle of 23.4 degrees and individual drift scans are separated by 21.67 arcminutes in Dec to produce a highly uniform, Nyquist-sampled map.Pulsar searching is a key aspect of the CRAFTS, which observe the sky area in the declination range of −14◦ < Dec < 66◦ in drift-scan mode using the FAST 19-beam receiver with a total bandwidth covering 1.05–1.45 GHz centred at 1.25 GHz .