GBT24B-040

Multi-Hour Scintillation Studies by the PSC: GBT Follow-up to GBO 20m Campaign

Abstract

Pulsars are powerful tools for studying the AU-to-pc scale structure and behavior of the interstellar medium, particularly through the study of pulsar scintillation. The scintillation group of the Pulsar Science Collaboratory, an organization designed to give high school and undergraduate students genuine research opportunities, has been tracking scintillation features in the data of ten pulsars over the past year using the GBO 20m telescope. After seeing high-quality, publication-worthy results from our current campaign, we seek to augment our data with a campaign using the GBT. By utilizing the larger observing bandwidth available with GBT, we can obtain more scintles across our observing band, resulting in greater constraints on scattering screen distances and increased resolution of the features in scintillation arcs. We propose multi-hour observations of our five most consistent pulsars, data quality-wise, in hopes of using the higher frequency resolution and wider observing bandwidth of the GBT to further constrain our estimations on various scintillation parameters as well as further resolve features in our data such as scintillation arcs. As such, we request 2.5-hour observations of these pulsars spanning five months, totaling 62.5 hours.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Jacob Turner *	Green Bank Observatory; West Virginia University
Kathleen A Gustavson	Associated Universities, Inc.
Jeffrey Marx	McDaniel College
Juan Lebron	Puerto Rico, University of
ALEXANDER LEE	Washington, University of
Manvith Kothapalli	Washington Bothell, University of
Zachary Zelensky	Pennsylvania State University
Gautam Ramkumar	California at Berkeley, University of; North Allegheny School District

* indicates the PI