The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey was a late 1990s
astronomical survey to identify pulsars. It was carried
out with the Parkes ObservatoryMB20 multibeam receiver, a
grid of thirteen feed horns that defined a pattern of thirteen
beams, which was developed for 21-cm line surveys. Detecting
pulsars requires teasing out pulsar-specific-characteristics of
their relatively weak signals from among all the sky's sources of
radio, the weak signals requiring far too much integration time
to discern pulses. The receiver, in addition to gathering data on
thirteen portions of the sky simultaneously, provided enough of a
spectral energy distribution (SED) to allow detection of pulsar candidates by their
spectral indexes.
Analysis of the observation data extended beyond 2000 and hundreds
of pulsars were identified.
The observation data has been re-analyzed more recently, using
newer computers and techniques, discovering more pulsars.