The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey uses a 13-element receiver operating at a wavelength of 20 cm to survey the inner Galactic plane with remarkable sensitivity. To date we have collected and analyzed data from 45% of the survey region (|b| < 5°; 260° < l < 50°), and have discovered 440 pulsars, in addition to re-detecting 190 previously known ones. Most of the newly discovered pulsars are at great distances, as inferred from a median dispersion measure (DM) of 400 cm−3 pc.

The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey which began in 1997 and is now about 50% complete. It has discovered more than 400 new pulsars so far, including a number of young, high magnetic field, and relativistic binary pulsars. Early results, descriptions of the survey and follow up timing programs can be found in papers by Lyne et al. (1999 MNRAS in press), Camilo et al. (this volume), and Manchester et al. (this volume). This paper describes the data release policy and how you can gain access to the raw data and details on the pulsars discovered.

It is fair to say that pulsar searches with the 100-m Effelsberg telescope have had something of a checkered history — after all, for many years, this was the largest radio telescope in the world never to have found a pulsar! This situation has, happily, changed. In this review we summarize recent discoveries of weak pulsars along the Galactic plane, give a progress report on a survey for highly dispersed pulsars in the Galactic centre and, in the spirit of this meeting, speculate on what should be a bright future for pulsar searches with this instrument.

We report the discovery of 3 pulsars, PSR J0030+0451, PSR J0711+09, and PSR J1313+09 that were found in a three dimensional (DM, period, position) search at 430 MHz using the 305m Arecibo telescope. PSR J0030+0451 is a nearby 4.8-millisecond solitary pulsar. Spin and astrometric parameters are presented for the three new pulsars. We have measured significant polarization in the millisecond pulsar, PSR J0030+0451, over more than 50% of the period and use these data and also a morphological decomposition of the profile to briefly discuss magnetospheric models.

The unique sensitivity of the Arecibo telescope at 430 MHz motivated a drift scan search of the visible sky divided up into eight declination strips. Based on an analysis of the data collected in the region assigned to us, eight new long-period pulsars have so far been discovered.

We have built a pulsar machine (PuMa) for operation at the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. The combination of PuMa and WSRT is capable of many types of pulsar research. We show the coherent dedispersion capabilities and the flexible frequency resolution. We discuss pulsar searching and simultaneous multifrequency observations.

Since the discovery of the original millisecond pulsar, no pulsars with a shorter spin period (P<1.56 ms) were found. However, according to the most popular equations of state, the theoretical limiting spin period of a neutron star can be much shorter. On the other hand, most of the large scale searches for millisecond pulsars carried out so far were strongly biased against the detection of ultrashort periodicities. In this paper we describe a new large scale pulsar survey with a minimum detectable period much shorter than previous searches.

We have searched 92 unidentified sources from the FIRST and NVSS radio catalogs for pulsations at 610 MHz. The selected sources are bright, have no identifications, are unresolved and have significant linear polarization. Our search was sensitive to sub-millisecond pulsations from pulsars with a large range of dispersion measures. We have detected no radio pulsations from these sources and conclude that they are unlikely to be a population of previously undetected pulsars.

We have conducted a pulsar survey of intermediate Galactic latitudes (5° < |b| < 15°) at 20 cm. The survey has been highly successful, discovering 58 new pulsars, eight of which are recycled, in only ∼14 days of integration time. One pulsar has a very narrow (2° FWHM) average profile for the pulsar’s period (278 ms). The six new recycled binary systems provide valuable information on the formation of white dwarf pulsar binaries. Two systems have massive white dwarf companions (> 0.57 M⊙ and > 1.2 M⊙), while another has a low mass (∼ 0.2 M⊙) companion in a 23.3-d orbit, residing the well-known orbital period “gap”.

We have sampled the population of compact (θ ≤ 25") radio sources with spectral indices 1.5 ≤ α ≤ 3.2 (where Sv ∝ v—α) using two large scale radio surveys. This yields a statistically useful sample of 74 radio sources with S1.4GHz ≥ 2.5 mJy and S365MHZ ≥ 200 mJy. The majority of the sources appear to be extragalactic, resembling either high redshift radio galaxies or relic radio galaxies. However, six known pulsars were detected, as well as 16 sources of unknown nature that appear too small and have spectra too steep to be extragalactic. We are using VLBA, pulsar searching, optical/IR spectroscopy, and other techniques to definitively classify these sources. If any are new pulsars, they are potentially very interesting as they were missed by previous surveys.

We report the status of a search for pulsars in the Galactic Centre, using a completely revised and improved high-sensitivity double-horn system at 4.85-GHz. We also present calculations about the success rate of periodicity searches for such a survey, showing that in contrast to conclusions in recent literature pulsars can be indeed detected at the chosen search frequency.

A radio pulsar in the Galactic center will suffer 350 seconds of pulse broadening. An imaging search for compact sources is far less desensitized by angular broadening than a periodicity search is affected by pulse broadening. We have conducted an imaging survey of the GC using the VLA and have detected approximately 200 sources. Six compact, steep-spectrum sources have been identified; additional compact sources with no spectral information have also been identified. Additional observations are in progress.

We outline the pulsar search capabilities of the AOFTM, describe results from recent searches, and discuss future plans.

I describe a computationally simple, efficient, and sensitive method to search long observations for pulsars in binary systems. The technique looks for orbitally induced sidebands in the power spectrum around a nominal spin frequency, enabling it to detect pulsars in high- or low-mass binaries with short orbital periods (Porb ≲ 5 h).

Seven millisecond pulsars (MSPs) have been identified from the NVSS by positional coincidence. Our examination of the characteristics of about, 280 known pulsars and 40 MSPs has shown that they have high polarization and a steep spectrum. We identify likely MSP candidates from both the NVSS at 1.4 GHz and the WENSS at 325 MHz. The first sample of 14 candidates has been observed by the WSRT using PuMa at both 92 and 21 cm in May 1999. From our preliminary analysis of the 382 MHz data, we find no evidence for MSPs in the first sample.

Measurement of accurate positions, pulse periods and period derivatives is an essential follow-up to any pulsar survey. The procedures being used to obtain timing parameters for the pulsars discovered in the Parkes multibeam pulsar survey are described. Completed solutions have been obtained so far for about 80 pulsars. They show that the survey is preferentially finding pulsars with higher than average surface dipole magnetic fields. Eight pulsars have been shown to be members of binary systems and some of the more interesting results relating to these are presented.