New determinations of the proper motions of 44 pulsars

A programme of observations to measure the proper motions of 44 pulsars has been carried out at Jodrell Bank over a four-year period, yielding 31 determinations of proper motion and 13 upper limits. Observations were carried out with two interferometers of the MERLIN radio synthesis instrument at 408 MHz. By wide-field phase referencing to multiple sources with the primary beam of the instrument, accurate positions of each pulsar relative to its reference sources have been determined for a number of epochs. The change in the measured position with epoch results in the determination of the proper motion of the pulsar, using a method similar to that of Lyne, Anderson & Salter.