The Molonglo Observatory transient event recorder.

In its normal synthesis mode of operation, the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) tracks a region of sky for a period of 12 hours with 64 real-time fan beams having high sensitivity at 843 MHz (Mills 1981). It thus provides an excellent opportunity to monitor the sky at the same time for transient radio events. This technique for recognizing extra-terrestrial sources was of considerable value in the first Molonglo pulsar search when only two beams were used. The transient event recorder has been designed to exploit the characteristics of the MOST over the widest possible range of transient time scales.