juliensimon/fermi-3pc-gamma-ray-pulsars

Fermi LAT Third Pulsar Catalog (3PC)

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO

Part of the Astronomy Datasets and Physics Datasets collections on Hugging Face.

Complete catalog of 7,197 gamma-ray pulsars detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), sourced from NASA HEASARC.

Dataset description

Pulsars are rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. When these beams sweep across Earth, they produce periodic pulses observed across the spectrum from radio to gamma rays. The Fermi LAT Third Pulsar Catalog (3PC) is the definitive census of pulsars detected at GeV gamma-ray energies by the Fermi Large Area Telescope, the most sensitive gamma-ray surveyor ever flown.

Gamma-ray pulsars fall into two broad populations:

• Millisecond pulsars (MSPs): old neutron stars spun up to periods of 1-30 ms by accretion from a binary companion. They have weak surface magnetic fields (~10^8-10^9 G) but enormous spin-down luminosities. Many were first discovered through gamma-ray pulsation searches, having been missed by radio surveys.
• Young pulsars: recently formed neutron stars (characteristic ages < 100 kyr) with strong magnetic fields (10^12 G) and periods of 30 ms to several seconds. These include famous objects like the Crab and Vela pulsars.

The Fermi LAT is uniquely suited for pulsar studies because gamma rays probe the magnetospheric emission regions directly. Unlike radio emission (which originates from a narrow cone near the magnetic poles), gamma-ray emission arises from particle acceleration in the outer magnetosphere or current sheet, providing constraints on pulsar emission geometry and plasma physics that are inaccessible at other wavelengths.

The 3PC catalog includes spin parameters (period, period derivative), derived quantities (spin-down luminosity, characteristic age, surface magnetic field), spectral properties (spectral index, cutoff energy), and flux measurements for each detected pulsar.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
__row	float	Row
name	string	Pulsar name (e.g. J0030+0451)
data_release	float	Data Release
ra	float	Right ascension (degrees, J2000)
dec	float	Declination (degrees, J2000)
lii	float	Galactic longitude (degrees)
bii	float	Galactic latitude (degrees)
semi_major_axis_68	float	Semi Major Axis 68
semi_minor_axis_68	float	Semi Minor Axis 68
position_angle_68	float	Position Angle 68
semi_major_axis_95	float	Semi Major Axis 95
semi_minor_axis_95	float	Semi Minor Axis 95
position_angle_95	float	Position Angle 95
detection_significance	float	Detection Significance
pivot_energy	float	Pivot Energy
flux_1_100_gev	float	Flux 1 100 Gev
flux_1_100_gev_error	float	Flux 1 100 Gev Error
energy_flux	float	Energy Flux
energy_flux_error	float	Energy Flux Error
pl_flux_density	float	Pl Flux Density
pl_flux_density_error	float	Pl Flux Density Error
pl_index	float	Pl Index
pl_index_error	float	Pl Index Error
lp_flux_density	float	Lp Flux Density
lp_flux_density_error	float	Lp Flux Density Error
lp_index	float	Lp Index
lp_index_error	float	Lp Index Error
lp_beta	float	Lp Beta
lp_beta_error	float	Lp Beta Error
lp_curve_significance	float	Lp Curve Significance
lp_epeak	float	Lp Epeak
lp_epeak_error	float	Lp Epeak Error
plec_flux_density	float	Plec Flux Density
plec_flux_density_error	float	Plec Flux Density Error
plec_index_s	float	Plec Index S
plec_index_s_error	float	Plec Index S Error
plec_exp_factor_s	float	Plec Exp Factor S
plec_exp_factor_s_error	float	Plec Exp Factor S Error
plec_exp_index	float	Plec Exp Index
plec_curve_significance	float	Plec Curve Significance
plec_epeak	float	Plec Epeak
plec_epeak_error	float	Plec Epeak Error
npred	float	Npred
variability_index	float	Variability Index
frac_variability	float	Frac Variability
frac_variability_error	float	Frac Variability Error
significance_peak	float	Significance Peak
flux_peak	float	Flux Peak
flux_peak_error	float	Flux Peak Error
time_peak	float	Time Peak
time_peak_interval	float	Time Peak Interval
assoc_name	string	Associated source name
assoc_prob_bay	float	Assoc Prob Bay
assoc_prob_lr	float	Assoc Prob Lr
assoc_ra	float	Assoc Ra
assoc_dec	float	Assoc Dec
assoc_error_radius	float	Assoc Error Radius
analysis_flags	float	Analysis Flags
__x_ra_dec	float	X Ra Dec
__y_ra_dec	float	Y Ra Dec
__z_ra_dec	float	Z Ra Dec

Quick stats

• 7,197 gamma-ray pulsars
• 61 columns retained after null filtering

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/fermi-3pc-gamma-ray-pulsars", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Overview
print(f"{len(df):,} gamma-ray pulsars")
print(df.describe())

Data source

All data comes from the Fermi LAT Pulsar Catalog (fermilpsc) hosted by NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), accessed via the TAP protocol.

Based on: Smith, D.A. et al. (2023), "The Third Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-Ray Pulsars", The Astrophysical Journal, 958, 191. arXiv:2307.11132

Update schedule

Static dataset. The 3PC catalog is a fixed publication; re-run only if HEASARC updates the table.

Related datasets

• pulsar-catalog — ATNF Pulsar Catalog (radio + multiwavelength)
• fermi-4fgl-dr4 — Fermi LAT 4FGL-DR4 source catalog
• fermi-3fhl-hard-gamma-ray — Fermi LAT 3FHL hard gamma-ray sources
• fermi-4lac-agn-catalog — Fermi LAT AGN 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{fermi_3pc_gamma_ray_pulsars,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Fermi LAT Third Pulsar Catalog (3PC)},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/fermi-3pc-gamma-ray-pulsars},
  note = {Based on Smith et al. (2023), NASA HEASARC fermilpsc table}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0