“The invisible black widow” is changing our view on the structure of ionized matter in our Galaxy
Pulsar radio emission, associated with rapidly spinning neutron stars, enables the estimation of their distances in the Galaxy through dispersion measure (DM). The DM quantifies the dispersive delay experienced by electromagnetic radiation as it traverses ionized matter, such as the interstellar medium (ISM). By measuring this delay across a range of frequencies, astronomers can obtain…