Determination of the orbital parameters of binary pulsars

We present a simple, novel method for determining the orbital parameters of binary pulsars. This method works with any sort of orbital sampling, no ma tter how sparse, provided that information on the period derivatives is ava ilable with each measurement of the rotational period of the pulsar, and it is applicable to binary systems with nearly circular orbits. We use the te chnique to estimate precisely the hitherto unknown orbital parameters of tw o binary millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, 47 Tuc S a nd T. The method can also be used more generally to make first-order estima tes of the orbital parameters of binary systems using a minimal number of d ata.