juliensimon/supernova-remnants

Green's Supernova Remnant Catalog

Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Galactic supernova remnants from Green's catalog with positions, angular sizes, radio flux, and spectral indices.

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are the expanding shells of gas and dust left behind after a supernova explosion. They are key sources of cosmic rays and play a major role in the chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium. Green's catalog is the standard reference for Galactic SNRs, maintained since 1984.

This dataset includes positions (equatorial and Galactic), angular sizes, morphological type, 1 GHz radio flux density, and radio spectral index for each remnant.

Supernova remnants are among the most important objects in astrophysics. Their expanding blast waves are widely believed to be the primary accelerators of Galactic cosmic rays up to the "knee" of the cosmic ray spectrum (~3 PeV). The three morphological types -- shell, filled-centre (plerion), and composite -- reflect distinct physical configurations: shell-type remnants are dominated by the forward shock sweeping up the interstellar medium, filled-centre remnants are powered by a central pulsar wind nebula, and composites exhibit both features.

The radio spectral index is a key diagnostic: shell-type SNRs typically show spectral indices around -0.5 (consistent with diffusive shock acceleration), while filled-centre remnants powered by pulsar winds tend to have flatter spectra (-0.0 to -0.3). Green's catalog remains the definitive census of the ~300 known Galactic SNRs -- a number thought to represent only a fraction of the true population.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
name	str	SNR designation in Galactic coordinates (e.g. 'G001.0-00.1')	SNR G000.0+00.0	0.0%
alt_names	str	Alternative/common names (e.g. 'Cas A', 'Crab Nebula'); null for unnamed remnants	Sgr A East	72.9%
ra	float64	Right ascension, ICRS J2000.0 (degrees, 0-360)	266.43333333	0.0%
dec	float64	Declination, ICRS J2000.0 (degrees, -90 to +90)	-29.0	0.0%
lii	float64	Galactic longitude (degrees, 0-360)	359.9584311	0.0%
bii	float64	Galactic latitude (degrees, -90 to +90); most SNRs lie within +-5 deg of the Galactic plane	-0.05441207	0.0%
major_diameter	float64	Angular size of the major axis (arcmin); ranges from <1' for young compact remnants to >300' for old evolved SNRs like Vela	3.5	0.0%
minor_diameter	float64	Angular size of the minor axis (arcmin); null if the remnant is approximately circular or the minor axis is unmeasured	2.5	57.6%
type	str	Morphological type code: S (shell -- forward shock dominates), F (filled-centre/plerion -- pulsar wind nebula), C (composite -- both features), ? (uncertain)	S	0.0%
flux_1_ghz	float64	Integrated radio flux density at 1 GHz (Jansky; 1 Jy = 10^-26 W/m^2/Hz); null for remnants too faint or confused for measurement	100000.0	6.4%
spectral_index	float64	Radio spectral index alpha (S_nu proportional to nu^alpha); shell-type SNRs typically alpha ~ -0.5, plerions (filled-centre) alpha ~ 0 to -0.3; null if spectrum is unmeasured	0.8	24.7%
snr_type_name	str	Full type name derived from type code: shell, filled-centre, composite, uncertain	shell	0.0%

Quick stats

• 295 supernova remnants
• 234 shell, 9 filled-centre, 37 composite
• 276 with measured 1 GHz radio flux

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/supernova-remnants", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/supernova-remnants", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# SNRs by type
print(df["snr_type_name"].value_counts())

# Brightest SNRs at 1 GHz
top = df.nlargest(10, "flux_1_ghz")[["name", "alt_names", "flux_1_ghz"]]

# Sky distribution in Galactic coordinates
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.scatter(df["lii"], df["bii"], s=5)
plt.xlabel("Galactic longitude (deg)")
plt.ylabel("Galactic latitude (deg)")
plt.title("Galactic SNR Distribution")
plt.show()

Data source

https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/surveys/snrs/

Related datasets

• juliensimon/gamma-ray-bursts

• juliensimon/gravitational-wave-events

• juliensimon/pulsar-catalog

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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{supernova_remnants,
  title = {Green's Supernova Remnant Catalog},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/supernova-remnants},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0