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… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/fermi-3pc-gamma-ray-pulsars.
Fermi LAT Third Pulsar Catalog (3PC)
<div align="center"> <img src="banner.jpg" alt="Cassiopeia A supernova remnant in X-ray, optical, and infrared light" width="400"> <p><em>Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO</em></p> </div>
Part of the [Astronomy Datasets](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/astronomy-datasets-69c24caf2f17e36128946743) and [Physics Datasets](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/physics-datasets-681b79c9a7e113e34e4467f4) 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
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}
}