Chinese FAST telescope discovered 76 new faint pulsars

Chinese scientists using the Chinese 500m Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), or the ‘China Sky Eye’, have discovered 76 new faint and occasionally emitting pulsars, including a group of the faintest pulsars known today, Xinhua reports

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These pulsars are peculiar for the rare pulsed emission over many rotation periods. Due to this, the international scientific community called them rotating radio transient sources (RRATs).

Unlike most pulsars, which emit pulses continuously, RRATs are difficult to detect in normal search regime. They are identified pulse by pulse based on the enormous amount of data obtained by the highly sensitive radio telescope.