Parkes observations for project P1323 semester 2024APRS_01

We have developed a novel technique to search for potential pulsars with massive, non-degenerate companions and are proposing to follow up on the first set of promising candidates. These candidates are suspected to be pulsar binary systems, with a companion star having spectral class O or B (roughly 10 solar masses), in which the pulsar is not accreting matter from this companion. The technique we have developed uses Gaia's third data release (DR3) to narrow down a list of candidates based on the companion star of these systems. The selection parameters are determined from the known systems with non-degenerate companions, of which there are seven. From a pruned list ~100 possible candidates, we inspected the publicly available images from the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS-low) to determine the presence of any radio sources at or near the location of the companion star, which could indicate a radio pulsar signal. RACS-low has a high spatial resolution (15 arcsec) allowing us to select the best five candidates to follow-up using the Parkes radio telescope, Murriyang, to search for a radio pulsar. This data will be used as a major component of a Masters research student thesis, due to complete at the end of 2024.