Acquiring a Small Dataset of a pulsar signal

[koroshii]

TL;DR

Is there somewhere I can get a small dataset of a pulsar signal for a final project?

I am taking a class in signal processing. We have a final project in which we seek out "real-world" signal data and process and analyze it, and write a report on what we figured out. I thought it would be interesting to put my own interests into it and try to analyze a pulsar signal. My idea is that is pulsars are periodic and you should be able to find its pulsing signal clearly with a DFT after some cleanup. I tried seeking some data out, but no surprise, the data sets are very large, around 30gb. I have a slow download speed and probably don't have the computational power to process it in a reasonable time, so I would truncate most of it, making the whole download a waste. The assignment asks a minimum data set of 1000 points. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way I could get a directly truncated data set to perform an analysis on. Maybe some test data set to demonstrate the nature of pulsars, if possible

Thank you!

 

[jedishrfu]

I found this reference in a search for pulsar signal data:

http://pulsarsearchcollaboratory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/PSC_search_guide.pdf

It talks about method of searching the data for periodicity ...

The site itself may have references for data:

http://pulsarsearchcollaboratory.com/

It looks like they have access to data:

Want to help us discover new pulsars? The Pulsar Search Collaboratory is an out-of-school-time citizen science project for students aged 13 and up. Teachers can join too! After training, PSC students and teachers gain access to radio astronomy data collected by the Green Bank Telescope, the world’s fully steerable radio telescope. PSC members then analyze the data to search for new pulsars.

 

[jedishrfu]

and this from Green Bank:

https://greenbankobservatory.org/?s=gbt+pulsar+data

I couldn't find any directly downloadable links but you might have to contact someone for that.

 

[Tom.G]

If you will settle for Cepheid Variables, this thread had some info and a link to a dataset:
https://www.physicsforums.com/posts/6407904

Cheers,
Tom