LBA observations for project V646 semester 2024APRS

This proposal aims to measure the parallax of pulsar B1055-52. PSR B1055-52 is particularly important for studying neutron star properties. Bright at radio and gamma-rays, the pulsar is also well detected at near-infrared, optical, UV and X-ray frequencies. In X-rays, we even can see the surface's thermal emission and can investigate the non-uniformity of the temperature distribution over rotation phase. Since PSR B1055-52 is a rare interpulse pulsar, there is an exceptionally good constraint on the angle between the magnetic dipole and rotation axes, allowing to resolve many model degeneracies. The wealth of observational data enable a very detailed investigation of this pulsar and neutron stars in general. However, these investigations cannot be completed without one essential parameter - the distance. Currently, the possible distance range obtained from the dispersion measure has a span of almost a factor 10 if different Galactic electron density models are considered. At the same time, there are several indicators that PSR B1055-52 is close enough to obtain a parallax-based distance with high accuracy.