Timing of optical pulsars with two high time resolution photometers at Asiago and NTT

Abstract

We have built two single photon very high speed photometers (Aqueye for the Asiago 1.8m telescope and Iqueye for the 3.5m ESO NTT) as prototypes of a ‘quantum’ photometer for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E‐ELT) The two photometers are the most accurate ‘time machines’ available to optical astronomy. Under the control of a GPS receiver and a Rubidium clock, the arrival time of each detected photon is referenced to UTC with a precision better than 500 picoseconds, continuously for hours of data acquisition. Light curves for three optical pulsars (Crab, B0540‐69, Vela) will be reported. Results from simultaneous observations of the Crab pulsar with the Jodrell Bank RadioTelescope will also be reported.