The Ceduna Revolution: the First 300 Days.

At the University of Tasmania: Steve Carter, Peter McCulloch, Simon
Ellingsen and Giuseppe Cimo,

At the ATNF: David Jauncey and Jim Lovell.

Abstract.

The beautiful results on annual cycle measurements for the very rapid
scintillators J1819+3845 (Dennett-Thorpe & de Bruyn 2001) and PKS
B1257-326 (Bignall et al., 2003) demonstrated a severe need to acquire
similar quality data for the slower scintillators with characteristic
time scales of days rather than hours. To do this it became necessary to
essentially dedicate a radio telescope to the job 24 hours a day for at
least a year. This we are now doing with the Ceduna 30 m telescope at
6.7 GHz. We describe the Ceduna facilities, the flux density calibration
procedures and results, and then present some of the results already
apparent from the first 300 days (and nights) of operation.