juliensimon/pulsar-glitch-catalog

Jodrell Bank Pulsar Glitch Catalogue

Part of the Astronomy Datasets and Stellar Catalogs collections on Hugging Face.

Comprehensive catalog of pulsar glitch events from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. Currently 728 glitch events across 223 pulsars (194 large/giant glitches).

Dataset description

Pulsar glitches are sudden spin-up events in neutron stars, thought to arise from angular momentum transfer between the superfluid interior and the solid crust. During a glitch, the rotation frequency of the pulsar increases abruptly, typically by a fractional amount delta_nu/nu ranging from ~10^-11 to ~10^-5. The largest glitches (delta_nu/nu > 10^-6) are called "giant glitches" and are characteristic of young pulsars like the Vela pulsar (PSR B0833-45), which glitches roughly every 2-3 years.

The physics of pulsar glitches provides a unique window into the interior structure of neutron stars. The leading model invokes a reservoir of angular momentum stored in quantised vortices pinned to the inner crust lattice. As the star spins down electromagnetically, a rotational lag develops between the superfluid and the crust. When the Magnus force on pinned vortices exceeds the pinning force, vortices unpin catastrophically and transfer angular momentum outward, producing the observed spin-up. The cumulative glitch activity of a pulsar constrains the fractional moment of inertia of the superfluid component, which in turn constrains the neutron star equation of state and the extent of the crustal superfluid.

The Jodrell Bank Glitch Catalogue is the most comprehensive compilation of pulsar glitch parameters, maintained by the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. It has been the standard reference for glitch studies since its inception and is regularly updated as new glitches are detected by pulsar timing programmes worldwide.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
bname	string	Pulsar B-name (e.g. B0531+21)
jname	string	Pulsar J-name (e.g. J0534+2200)
n_glitches	int64	N Glitches
epoch_mjd	float	Glitch epoch (Modified Julian Date)
epoch_mjd_err	float64	Epoch Mjd Err
delta_nu_nu	float	Fractional frequency change (delta_nu/nu), the glitch size
delta_nu_nu_err	float64	Delta Nu Nu Err
delta_nudot_nudot	float	Fractional frequency derivative change (delta_nudot/nudot)
delta_nudot_nudot_err	float64	Delta Nudot Nudot Err
references	string	Literature references
epoch_datetime	datetime	Glitch epoch (UTC datetime, derived from MJD)
is_large_glitch	bool	True if delta_nu/nu > 1e-6 (giant glitch)

Quick stats

• 728 glitch events
• 223 unique pulsars
• 194 large/giant glitches (delta_nu/nu > 10^-6)
• Largest glitch: 1647-4552 (delta_nu/nu = 6.50e-05)
• Most frequently glitching pulsar: 0537-6910 (65 glitches)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

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

# Glitch size distribution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
sizes = df["delta_nu_nu"].dropna()
sizes[sizes > 0].hist(bins=50, log=True)
plt.xlabel("delta_nu/nu")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.title("Pulsar Glitch Size Distribution")

# Most glitching pulsars
top = df.groupby("jname").size().sort_values(ascending=False).head(10)
print(top)

# Giant glitches only
giants = df[df["is_large_glitch"] == True]
print(f"{len(giants):,} giant glitches")

# Glitch rate analysis: glitches per year for well-studied pulsars
if "epoch_datetime" in df.columns:
    vela = df[df["jname"].str.contains("0833", na=False)]
    print(f"Vela pulsar: {len(vela)} glitches")

Data source

All data comes from the Jodrell Bank Pulsar Glitch Catalogue, maintained by the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester (Espinoza et al. 2011, Basu et al. 2022).

Update schedule

Quarterly (Feb/May/Aug/Nov 1st at 09:30 UTC) via GitHub Actions.

Related datasets

• pulsar-catalog — ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• mcgill-magnetar-catalog — McGill Magnetar Catalog
• gravitational-wave-events — LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Gravitational Wave Events
• supernova-remnants — Supernova Remnant Catalog

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{pulsar_glitch_catalog,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Jodrell Bank Pulsar Glitch Catalogue},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/pulsar-glitch-catalog},
  note = {Based on Jodrell Bank Pulsar Glitch Catalogue (Espinoza et al. 2011)}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0