Catalogue

The catalogue comprises YAML files containing pulsar flux density measurements for each paper the repository has included. You should not assume that this repository has all flux density measurements for a pulsar you are interested in. Instead, you should search through the literature to find all papers that contain flux density measurements of the pulsar and confirm all of those papers are in the catalogue. If you would like to add a new paper to the catalogue see the Adding to the catalogue section.

Using the catalogue

This section will explain how to use the catalogue. If you would like more information, you can see the module documentation in the catalogue module description.

You can use the following command to get all fluxes from the catalogue.

from pulsar_spectra.catalogue import collect_catalogue_fluxes
cat_dict = collect_catalogue_fluxes()

cat_dict will have the format

cat_dict = {"Pulsar Jname":[["List of frequencies in MHz"],
                            ["List of flux densities in mJy"],
                            ["List of flux density uncertainties in mJy"],
                            ["The reference label (in the format 'Author_year')"]],
            "Other pulsar":[["List of frequencies in MHz"],
                            ["List of flux densities in mJy"],
                            ["List of flux density uncertainties in mJy"],
                            ["The reference label (in the format 'Author_year')"]],
           }

For example, this is the data for PSR J1453-6413.

print(cat_dict['J1453-6413'])
[[950.0, 800.0, 1400, 8400, 728, 1382, 3100, 185.0, 200.0, 154.0, 200, 400, 150, 800],
 [42.0, 89.0, 14.0, 1.5, 80.0, 18.0, 2.4, 1244.0, 684.0, 630.0, 684.0, 230.0, 630.0, 53.0],
 [4.2, 26.7, 1.4, 0.75, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, 20.0, 23.0, 200.0, 23.0, 115.0, 20.0, 3.0],
 ['van_Ommen_1997', 'van_Ommen_1997', 'Hobbs_2004', 'Johnston_2006', 'Jankowski_2018', 'Jankowski_2018', 'Jankowski_2018', 'Xue_2017', 'Xue_2017', 'Bell_2016', 'Murphy_2017', 'Taylor_1993', 'Bell_2016', 'Jankowski_2019']]

You can add your data like so before fitting the spectra

freqs, fluxs, flux_errs, refs = cat_dict[pulsar]
freqs += [150.]
fluxs += [1000.]
flux_errs += [100.]
refs += ["Your Work"]

You can exclude papers that you don’t trust the results or if you think they’re negatively affecting your fit. For example, I can create a cat_dict without Sieber et al. 1973 like so

cat_dict = collect_catalogue_fluxes(exclude=["Sieber_1973"])

Inversely if you only what the flux density measurements from a few papers, you can use the include argument. For example, you can create a cat_dict that only includes data from Murphy et al. 2017 and Xue et al. 2017 like so

cat_dict = collect_catalogue_fluxes(include=["Murphy_2017", "Xue_2017"])

Papers included in our catalogue

Papers included in our catalogue
Paper	# Pulsars	Frequency range (MHz)	Link
ATNF pulsar catalogue	2863	40-150000	Catalogue website
Bartel et al. (1978)	18	14800-22700	ADS
Manchester et al. (1978a)	224	40-408	ADS
Izvekova et al. (1981)	86	39-102	ADS
Dewey et al. (1985)	34	390-390	ADS
McConnell et al. (1991)	4	610-610	ADS
Johnston et al. (1992)	100	640-1577	ADS
Wolszczan et al. (1992)	1	430-1400	ADS
Johnston et al. (1993)	1	430-2360	ADS
Manchester et al. (1993)	1	660-660	ADS
Camilo et al. (1995)	29	430-430	ADS
Lundgren et al. (1995)	1	430-1400	ADS
Nicastro et al. (1995)	1	411-1400	ADS
Qiao et al. (1995)	61	660-1440	ADS
Robinson et al. (1995)	2	436-640	ADS
Lorimer et al. (1995b)	280	408-1606	ADS
Manchester et al. (1996)	55	436-436	ADS
Zepka et al. (1996)	1	430-1400	ADS
van Ommen et al. (1997)	82	800-960	ADS
Kramer et al. (1998)	34	1400-1400	ADS
Toscano et al. (1998)	19	436-1660	ADS
Kramer et al. (1999)	15	2695-4850	ADS
Stairs et al. (1999)	19	410-1414	ADS
Lommen et al. (2000)	3	430-1400	ADS
Malofeev et al. (2000)	212	102-102	ADS
Kuzmin et al. (2001)	30	102-111	ADS
Manchester et al. (2001)	100	1374-1374	ADS
Morris et al. (2002)	120	1374-1374	ADS
Kramer et al. (2003a)	200	1374-1374	ADS
Hobbs et al. (2004a)	453	1400-1400	ADS
Karastergiou et al. (2005)	48	3100-3100	ADS
Johnston et al. (2006)	31	8356-8356	ADS
Lorimer et al. (2006)	142	1374-1374	ADS
Kijak et al. (2007)	11	325-1060	ADS
Stappers et al. (2008)	13	147-147	ADS
Bates et al. (2011)	18	6591-6591	ADS
Keith et al. (2011)	9	17000-24000	ADS
Kijak et al. (2011)	15	610-4850	ADS
Zakharenko et al. (2013)	40	20-25	ADS
Dembska et al. (2014)	19	610-8350	ADS
Dai et al. (2015)	24	730-3100	ADS
Stovall et al. (2015)	36	35-79	ADS
Basu et al. (2016)	1	325-1280	ADS
Bell et al. (2016)	17	154-154	ADS
Bilous et al. (2016)	158	149-149	ADS
Frail et al. (2016)	200	147-147	ADS
Han et al. (2016)	204	1274-1523	ADS
Kondratiev et al. (2016)	48	149-149	ADS
Kijak et al. (2017)	12	325-610	ADS
Mignani et al. (2017)	1	97500-343500	ADS
Murphy et al. (2017)	60	76-227	ADS
Xue et al. (2017)	48	185-185	ADS
Jankowski et al. (2018)	441	728-3100	ADS
Johnston et al. (2018)	586	1360-1360	ADS
Jankowski et al. (2019)	205	843-843	ADS
Kaur et al. (2019)	1	81-3100	ADS
Sanidas et al. (2019)	288	135-135	ADS
Xie et al. (2019)	32	1369-1369	ADS
Zhang et al. (2019)	3	768-3968	ADS
Zhao et al. (2019)	71	4820-5124	ADS
Bilous et al. (2020)	43	53-63	ADS
Bondonneau et al. (2020)	64	53-65	ADS
McEwen et al. (2020)	670	350-350	ADS
Alam et al. (2021)	47	430-2100	ADS
Bondonneau et al. (2021)	12	50-50	ADS
Han et al. (2021)	201	1250-1250	ADS
Johnston et al. (2021)	44	1369-1369	ADS
Kravtsov et al. (2022)	20	24-24	ADS
Lee et al. (2022)	22	70-352	ADS
Spiewak et al. (2022)	189	1284-1284	ADS

Finding more papers to add to the catalogue

The pulsar_spectra catalogue is not a complete catalogue of flux density measurements, so researchers should do their own literature review to find any publications that have not yet been included in the catalogue. The following sections are suggestions of some ways to find new publications.

Look up ANTF references

If you see a reference label ending in _ATNF (see below for an example), those flux density measurements were imported from the ATNF catalogue.

The ATNF catalogue values often record flux density measurements at the nearest standard frequency, which can be inaccurate and should be replaced with the actual value.

The first author and the year in the reference label will help you find the full reference on the ATNF references page. The publication can be added to the catalogue.

Adding to the catalogue

If you would like to add a new paper to the catalogue, you should first format the data into CSV with the following format:

Pulsar Jname,Frequency (MHz),Flux Density (mJy),Flux Density Uncertainty (mJy)
J0030+0451,150,37.6,4.4
J0030+0451,180,32.4,3.2
J0034-0534,150,202.8,7.9
J0034-0721,150,367.9,10.5

If the paper does not provide a flux density, then the script will assume a 50% uncertainty if you do not have to include it in your CSV like so:

Pulsar Jname,Frequency (MHz),Flux Density (mJy)
J0030+0451,150,37.6
J0030+0451,180,32.4
J0034-0534,150,202.8
J0034-0721,150,367.9

If the paper only provides the B name then the script will convert to a J name using psrqpy as long as the PSR name starts with a B:

Pulsar Jname,Frequency (MHz),Flux Density (mJy)
B0037+56,390,3.5
B0045+33,390,4.5
B0052+51,390,3.6
B0053+47,390,5.8

Then move to the scripts subdirectory of the repository and run the command:

python csv_to_yaml.py --csv your_paper.csv --ref author_year

This will put a YAML file of the paper in pulsar_spectra/catalogue_papers/. You should then reinstall the software (python setup.py install) then run a spectral fit to confirm it worked.

So others can use this paper’s data, you should

Make a fork of the pulsar_spectra repository
Clone your fork
Add the new paper YAML file and make a commit
Git push to your fork and then make a pull request on GitHub
Wait for your pull request to be approved and merged
Pat yourself on the back for contributing to open-source software!

Catalogue format

The catalogue is made up of YAML files of each paper. The format of the YAML files is:

{
    "Pulsar Jname": {
        "Frequency MHz":    ["List of frequencies in MHz"],
        "Flux Density mJy": ["List of flux densities in mJy"],
        "Flux Density error mJy": ["List of flux density uncertainties in mJy"]
    }
}

For example:

{
    "J0030+0451": {
        "Frequency MHz": [150.0, 180.0],
        "Flux Density mJy": [ 37.6, 32.4],
        "Flux Density error mJy": [ 4.4, 3.2]
    },
    "J0034-0534": {
        "Frequency MHz": [150.0],
        "Flux Density mJy": [202.8],
        "Flux Density error mJy": [7.9]
    },
}