juliensimon/chime-frb-catalog

CHIME/FRB Catalog

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope -- one of the most exciting mysteries in modern astrophysics.

First discovered in 2007, FRBs are millisecond-duration radio transients of extragalactic origin whose physical origin remains debated, though magnetars are a leading candidate. CHIME, a radio telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada, has revolutionized FRB science by detecting hundreds of bursts thanks to its enormous field of view (~200 square degrees) and continuous operation at 400-800 MHz.

The First CHIME/FRB Catalog (CHIME/FRB Collaboration, 2021, ApJS, 257, 59) contains FRBs detected between 2018 July 25 and 2019 July 1, representing the largest uniform FRB sample to date.

The dispersion measure (DM) recorded for each burst encodes the integrated column density of free electrons along the line of sight, making FRBs powerful probes of the intergalactic medium and the so-called 'missing baryons' problem. High-DM events trace sightlines through cosmological distances where the intervening plasma imprints information about large-scale structure, the epoch of helium reionization, and the baryon content of the cosmic web.

Repeating sources are of particular scientific interest because they rule out cataclysmic progenitor models and constrain the local environment of the source. Burst morphology parameters such as scattering time and sub-burst structure encode propagation effects through turbulent plasma, providing diagnostics of the circum-source and host-galaxy interstellar medium at extragalactic distances.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
tns_name	str	Transient Name Server designation encoding the discovery date (e.g. 'FRB 20181030A' = detected 2018 Oct 30, first event that day); the canonical identifier for cross-referencing with other catalogs	FRB20190131D	0.0%
repeater_name	str	Common name of the repeating source this burst belongs to (e.g. 'FRB 20121102A'); null for apparent one-off events; non-null values rule out cataclysmic progenitor models for that source	-9999	0.0%
ra_deg	float64	Right ascension of best-fit burst position (ICRS J2000.0, degrees, 0-360); CHIME localization precision is typically 10-30 arcmin due to the instrument's fixed north-south orientation	57.46	0.0%
dec_deg	float64	Declination of best-fit burst position (ICRS J2000.0, degrees, -90 to +90); CHIME is sensitive to declinations above roughly -20 deg	22.75	0.0%
glon_deg	float64	Galactic longitude (degrees, 0-360); used to assess line-of-sight Milky Way DM contribution and scattering screen effects	168.11	0.0%
glat_deg	float64	Galactic latitude (degrees, -90 to +90); bursts at low |b| have higher Milky Way DM contributions and stronger scattering	-24.08	0.0%
snr	float64	Signal-to-noise ratio of the detection in the CHIME/FRB real-time pipeline; drives the detection completeness function; bursts near the threshold (SNR ~8-10) have less reliable morphology parameters	18.7	0.0%
dm_pc_cm3	float64	Dispersion Measure -- integrated free-electron column density along the line of sight (pc/cm3); extragalactic FRBs typically 100-2500 pc/cm3; subtract Milky Way contribution to obtain host+IGM DM, a crude redshift proxy	642.1	0.0%
dm_fitb_pc_cm3	float64	DM measured by fitting the burst structure (pc/cm3); may differ from dm_pc_cm3 when the burst has complex sub-structure; null if structure-based fitting was not performed	642.1218	0.0%
scattering_time_ms	float64	Temporal broadening of the burst due to multi-path scattering in turbulent plasma (ms at 600 MHz); scales steeply with DM; null when the burst is unresolved	0.000426	0.0%
flux_jy	float64	Peak flux density at the fiducial reference frequency (Jy; 1 Jy = 10^-26 W/m2/Hz); null when only an upper or lower limit is available	2.9	0.0%
fluence_jy_ms	float64	Burst fluence -- flux density integrated over the burst duration (Jy*ms); proportional to detected energy; used to construct the FRB energy function	6.8	0.0%
sub_burst_count	int64	Number of distinct sub-bursts identified within the event envelope; values >=2 indicate temporal fine structure common in repeating sources; null when sub-burst decomposition was not attempted	0	0.0%
is_repeater	bool	True if this burst originates from a source with at least one other detected burst in the catalog or literature; False for apparent one-off events; repeaters have distinct morphological and spectral properties	False	0.0%

Quick stats

• 600 FRB events
• 94 from repeating sources
• Median DM: 503.9 pc/cm^3
• Max DM: 3037.7 pc/cm^3
• Median S/N: 15.3

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/chime-frb-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/chime-frb-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# DM distribution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df["dm_pc_cm3"].hist(bins=50)
plt.xlabel("Dispersion Measure (pc/cm^3)")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.title("CHIME/FRB DM Distribution")
plt.show()

# Repeaters vs one-offs
repeaters = df[df["is_repeater"] == True]
one_offs = df[df["is_repeater"] == False]
print(f"{len(repeaters)} repeaters, {len(one_offs)} one-offs")

# Sky distribution colored by DM
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 6))
plt.scatter(df["ra_deg"], df["dec_deg"], c=df["dm_pc_cm3"], s=5, cmap="viridis")
plt.colorbar(label="DM (pc/cm^3)")
plt.xlabel("RA (deg)")
plt.ylabel("Dec (deg)")
plt.title("CHIME/FRB Sky Distribution")
plt.show()

Data source

https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-3?-source=J/ApJS/257/59

Related datasets

• juliensimon/pulsar-catalog

• juliensimon/gamma-ray-bursts

• juliensimon/gravitational-wave-events

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About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{chime_frb_catalog,
  title = {CHIME/FRB Catalog},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/chime-frb-catalog},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0