J/ApJS/280/58 Parkes transient database II. (PTD II) (Yang+, 2025)
Parkes transient events.
II. Pulsar single-pulses database containing raw data segments.
Yang X., Zhang S., Le-Yu Tang, Toomey L., Wu X.
<Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 280, 58 (2025)>
=2025ApJS..280...58Y 2025ApJS..280...58Y
ADC_Keywords: Radio sources; Transient; Pulsars
Keywords: Radio bursts ; Radio transient sources ; Radio pulsars ;
Astronomy databases
Abstract:
We have reprocessed single-pulse candidates from the first four years
(1997-2001) of the Parkes Multibeam receiver system observations,
creating a new Parkes transient database (PTD II) that contains
165,592 single pulses from 363 known pulsars. Unlike previous
databases, PTD II preserves the critical raw data segments of each
detected pulse, enabling detailed analyses of emission physics while
maintaining a compact size of only 1.5GB. The database employs an
sqlite3 structure organising pulsar metadata, observation files, and
pulse events with their raw data stored in binary format. We provide
processing tools for extracting and analyzing single-pulse data,
enabling fluence fitting and statistical analysis. Our pulsars exhibit
diverse fluence distributions, such as log-normal, Gaussian, and
unimodal. Temporal analyses reveal significant evolution in emission
characteristics of several pulsars, including event-rate variations
spanning 2 orders of magnitude in PSR J1602-5100 and PSR J0942-5552.
Beyond supporting fundamental pulsar emission studies, the database
serves as a valuable training resource for developing new single-pulse
detection algorithms in the presence of radio-frequency interference.
Description:
We now present the Parkes transient database (PTD II;
doi:10.25919/34am-zx04), which focuses on a subset of pulses from
known pulsars extracted from PTD I (Zhang+ 2020ApJS..249...14Z 2020ApJS..249...14Z). The
raw data segments of these pulses are also stored in PTD II.
The PTD I contains the searching results of all the observations
during the first 4yr (from 1997 to 2001) of operation of the Parkes
Multibeam receiver system. The PTD I (Zhang+ 2020) has recorded
568,736,756 single pulse candidates.
Our pipeline in PTD II makes use of sqlite3 (https://www.sqlite.org/)
to automatically select single-pulse candidates from the file segments
in PTD I.
See Section 2.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table6.dat 57 363 Single-pulse detections of pulsars
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See also:
B/psr : ATNF Pulsar Catalogue (Manchester+, 2005)
J/MNRAS/328/17 : Parkes Multi-Beam Pulsar Survey (Manchester+, 2001)
J/MNRAS/423/1351 : Energy distribution in pulsars (Burke-Spolaor+, 2012)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table6.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 10 A10 --- PSR PSR name (JHHMM+DD or JHHMM+DDMM)
12- 17 F6.4 s Per [0.016/7.74] Period of the pulsar from ATNF
19- 24 F6.2 pc.cm-3 DM [2.9/748] Dispersion measure of the pulsar
from the ATNF pulsar catalog (see B/psr)
26- 30 I5 --- Npulse [1/17451] Number of pulses detected in the
single-pulse searching pipeline
32- 37 I6 --- Ntot [31/849715] Total number of periods in the
observation
39- 43 F5.2 --- B_SNRsp [8/44.4] S/N of the brightest single pulse
detected
45- 49 F5.2 --- b_SNRsp [8/12.16] S/N of the faintest single pulse
detected
51- 55 F5.1 --- FRatio [1/179] Fluence ratio
57 A1 --- Class [LGUO-] Energy distribution classification (1)
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Note (1): Energy distribution classifications if more than 100 single pulses
are detected as follows:
L = log-normal (25 occurrences)
G = Gaussian (5 occurrences)
O = other (49 occurrences)
- = <100 single pulses (284 occurrences)
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
License: CC-BY-4.0
References:
Zhang et al. Paper I. 2020ApJS..249...14Z 2020ApJS..249...14Z
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 12-Jun-2026