The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue, PSRCAT, is now in its 20th year and – with the launch of our updated website – has been released in its 80th version.
A valued resource within the global pulsar astronomy research community, and one of our most cited publications, PSRCAT provides command-line and web-interface access to over 200 parameters for 3748 pulsars so far.
The command-line interface is installed on hundreds of personal computers and servers across the globe, and observing systems for many radio telescopes including Murriyang, our Parkes radio telescope.
The community relies on the up-to-date parameters provided by the catalogue for projects such as pulsar timing and folding of time-series data for pulsar emission and rotation studies.
ATNF staff have kept the catalogue up to date since PSRCAT’s beginnings in 2004. Collating parameters from published peer-reviewed articles is carried out on a quarterly cadence.
As a user and an author, you can help us update the catalogue as quickly as possible by following our guidelines for publishing pulsar parameters!
While there are many ways to present pulsar data in papers, we recommend:
- All parameters are published in tables (see short and long examples in Tables 1 and 2 below)
- Provide links in the paper to the online versions of the tables
By following these guidelines, we can ensure that your pulsar discoveries get all the attention they deserve. It also enables us to update this high-quality resource in a timely fashion.
Table 1: Example of short table for pulsar parameters.
Table 2: Example of long table for displaying pulsar timing solutions.
First detected millisecond pulsar in the Galactic Centre, nicknamed ‘Sunfish’, is in our PSRCAT. Is yours?
Lower et al., 2024. A Millisecond Pulsar Binary Embedded in a Galactic Center Radio Filament
Image credit: Ian Heywood.