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28th of March 2024
A figure showing the distribution of
Modeling the Radial Distribution of Pulsars in the Galaxy
by Xie et al.
The Parkes 20 cm multibeam pulsar surveys have discovered nearly half of the known pulsars and revealed many distant pulsars with high dispersion measures. Using a sample of 1301 pulsars from these surveys, Xie et al. have explored the spatial distribution and birth rate of "normal" pulsars (i.e., excluding pulsars in globular clusters and binary systems, "recycled" milli-second pulsars, and extragalactic pulsars). An improved radial distribution is derived for the pulsar surface density projected onto the Galactic plane, which has a maximum value at ∼4 kpc from the Galactic center. The local surface density and birth rate of pulsars, are also derived. The data suggests there are ~11,000 potentially detectable pulsars in the Galaxy. However, as only ~10% of pulsars have beams visible from Earth, in total it is inferred that there are ~110,000 pulsars in the Galaxy.

The figure above shows a projection of the 1301 sample pulsars onto the Galactic plane. Pulsars discovered by the Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Surveys are marked as red triangles and those discovered by other surveys are marked as black dots. The Galactic Centre is the origin of the coordinate system, and the coordinates of the Sun are (0.0, 8.3). The spiral arms of the Galaxy are also shown.

As Friday 29th March and Monday 1st April are Easter Holidays in Australia, the next ADAP will be Tuesday 2nd April.




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