juliensimon/pulsar-catalog

ATNF Pulsar Catalogue

Complete catalog of known radio pulsars from the ATNF Pulsar Catalogue, sourced via NASA HEASARC. Currently 4,353 pulsars (804 millisecond pulsars, 497 in binary systems).

Dataset description

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue (Manchester et al. 2005) is the definitive reference catalog, maintained by CSIRO. It includes spin period, period derivative, dispersion measure, flux density, distance estimates, and derived quantities such as characteristic age, surface magnetic field, and spin-down luminosity.

Millisecond pulsars (period < 30 ms) are ancient pulsars spun up by accretion from a companion star. They are among the most precise clocks in the universe and are used for pulsar timing arrays to detect gravitational waves.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
name	string	Pulsar J-name
alt_name	string	Alternative B-name designation
ra	float	Right ascension (degrees)
dec	float	Declination (degrees)
period	float	Barycentric period (seconds)
period_dot	float	Period derivative (s/s)
dm	float	Dispersion measure (pc/cm^3)
flux_1400_mhz	float	Mean flux density at 1400 MHz (mJy)
companion_type	string	Binary companion classification
dm_distance	float	DM-derived distance (kpc)
age	float	Characteristic spin-down age (years)
b_surf	float	Surface magnetic field (Gauss)
e_dot	float	Spin-down luminosity (erg/s)
pulsar_type	string	Pulsar type classification
pm_tot	float	Total proper motion (mas/yr)
discovery_date	int	Year of discovery publication
assoc_object	string	Associated objects (e.g. SNR, globular cluster)
binary_model	string	Binary model type
is_millisecond	bool	True if period < 30 ms
is_binary	bool	True if in a binary system

Quick stats

• 4,353 pulsars
• 804 millisecond pulsars (period < 30 ms)
• 497 binary pulsars
• Median period: 0.4860 s
• Median DM: 147.5 pc/cm^3

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

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

# Millisecond pulsars
msp = df[df["is_millisecond"] == True]
print(f"{len(msp):,} millisecond pulsars")

# Binary pulsars
binaries = df[df["is_binary"] == True]
print(f"{len(binaries):,} in binary systems")

# Period-period derivative diagram (P-Pdot)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
valid = df.dropna(subset=["period", "period_dot"])
valid = valid[valid["period_dot"] > 0]
plt.scatter(valid["period"], valid["period_dot"], s=1, alpha=0.5)
plt.xscale("log"); plt.yscale("log")
plt.xlabel("Period (s)")
plt.ylabel("Period derivative (s/s)")
plt.title("P-Pdot Diagram")

Data source

All data comes from the ATNF Pulsar Catalogue (Manchester, R. N., Hobbs, G. B., Teoh, A. & Hobbs, M., 2005, AJ, 129, 1993), accessed via NASA HEASARC TAP service.

Update schedule

Monthly (1st Monday at 18:00 UTC) via GitHub Actions.

Related datasets

• gamma-ray-bursts — Fermi GBM Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog
• space-track-satcat — NORAD Satellite Catalog
• solar-flare-index — Solar flare observations

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Citation

@dataset{pulsar_catalog,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {ATNF Pulsar Catalogue},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/pulsar-catalog},
  note = {Based on ATNF Pulsar Catalogue (Manchester et al. 2005) via NASA HEASARC}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0