Calculated distance to a pulsar using DM

Overview

In my first year I analyzed the difference between radio frequency interference and pulsar detection. My research for the American Astronomical Society Conference centered on tracking pulsars using the 20 meter telescope at Greenbank to analyze the change in spin rate in both topocentric and barycentric measurements. This year I chose to center my focus on dispersion measure and distance to the pulsar in kiloparsecs. Dispersion measure is the density of electrons and the medium in which waves travel through them. I wanted to calculate how far away a pulsar is by using dispersion measure which is better known as DM. I used the right ascension and declination to determine the position of the pulsar in the sky. Right ascension is comparable to the longitude of the sky and declination is the latitude of the sky. I selected known pulsars using the ATNF catalog, I analyzed 48 known pulsars. Using my permitted access to the pulsar search collaboratory website, I calculated the distance to each pulsar with their tools. My hypothesis was that the higher the DM the further the pulsar would be from Earth. There would be more electrons in space for the waves to travel. In conclusion I found that the pulsars along the galactic plane fit my original prediction. My graph shows a positive trend with increasing dispersion measure.