The Green Bank northern sky survey for fast pulsars

We have carried out a survey of the northern sky for millisecond pulsars using the Green Bank 140 foot (43 m) telescope at 370 MHz. Our goal was to find the strongest millisecond pulsars in the northern hemisphere. The flux-density limit of our survey was 8 mJy for slow pulsars with typical pulse shapes and high Galactic latitudes. Spectra were sampled at intervals of 256 mu s, so pulsars with periods as short as 512 mu s were potentially detectable. We obtained high-quality data covering 15,900 deg(2) of sky, or 77% of the northern hemisphere. We observed a further 1500 deg(2) with somewhat reduced sensitivity. We detected a total of 84 pulsars, including eight not previously known. The new objects include two recycled pulsars: PSR J1022 + 1001, a 16.5 ms pulsar in a nearly circular 7.8 day orbit with a white dwarf companion, and PSR J1518 + 4904, a 40.9 ms pulsar in a mildly relativistic 8.6 day orbit of eccentricity 0.249. We have made timing observations of all the new pulsars, and we summarize their rotation and astrometric parameters. Finally, were compare the full list of detected pulsars with a list of those which ''should'' have been detectable according to their published flux densities and the characteristics of our search.