Stargazing

British television with a brand new project – Pulsar Hunters. We need your help to discover unknown pulsars. These are the dense, fast-spinning cores of dead stars. Get involved in the biggest Zooniverse event of the year at www.pulsarhunters.org.

As the neutron star spins, beams of radio waves from its magnetic poles sweep across our line of sight so it flashes like a cosmic lighthouse. Radio telescopes can be used to detect this very regular 'tick-tock' of a spinning pulsar. But discovering new pulsars is like finding a needle in a haystack. We must search for their faint, repeating signals hidden among terrestrial radio interference from devices like mobile phones, radars and telecommunications equipment.