Vela Pulsar
ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIOD 89.3 MS · FIELD 3.38×10¹² G · CHARACTERISTIC AGE 11 300 YR · SPIN-DOWN 6.92×10³⁶ ERG/S
OVERVIEW
] NEUTRON STARVela Pulsar is a in the constellation Vela, 931.9 from Earth. Other catalogues list it as B0833-45, J0835-4510 and PSR B0833-45, among 7 designations in total. It was discovered in 1968.
The brightest pulsar in the sky at gamma-ray energies, in the remains of a supernova about eleven thousand years old. It is the object glitches were discovered in: every few years its rotation speeds up abruptly, which is thought to be the superfluid interior slipping against the crust.
- WHAT IT IS
- Pulsar
- HOW FAR
- 931.9
The light arriving now left it that long ago.
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see Vela Pulsar for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.
Say where you are, and this line says when Vela Pulsar is worth going out for.
APPARENT PLACE
] EQUINOX J2026.8Where a telescope has to be pointed today, which is not quite where the catalogue records the object: the coordinate grid itself has turned since the year 2000 the catalogue is referred to.
- RIGHT ASCENSION
- DECLINATION
- GRID TURNED SINCE
- 11.1
- PROPER MOTION SINCE .0
- 1.55
Computed for 2026-10-21 00:00 UT. Two things separate it from the catalogued position above: Vela Pulsar has moved under its own proper motion, and the coordinate grid has turned under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. The motion is counted from J2000.0, the epoch the position above was measured at — a different thing from the equinox its coordinates are named for, even where the two fall in the same year. The catalogued place is itself known to 0.4 mas, which is what this arithmetic can be trusted to however many digits it is printed with. Aberration, parallax and refraction are left out. Aberration swings every position by up to twenty arcseconds over a year; parallax stays under an arcsecond for all but the nearest stars; refraction is nothing overhead and about half a degree at the horizon, where it answers to the air, not the sky. The same figure for any date.
CATALOG DATA
] 12 FIELDSThe raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.
WHAT KIND OF THING IT IS
What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.
- Surface magnetic field
- 3.38×10¹² G
- Spin period
- 0.0893284
- Spin-down rate
- 1.25×10⁻¹³ /s
- Characteristic age
- 11 321.9 yr
- Spin-down luminosity
- 6.92×10³⁶ erg/s
HOW BRIGHT IT IS
What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.
- Radio flux at 1400 MHz
- 1050 mJy
WHERE IT IS AND HOW IT MOVES
Position, motion across the sky and the size it covers on it. These are measurements of the object as seen from here, so every one of them depends on where here is.
- Proper motion (RA)
- −49.68 ±0.06
- Proper motion (Dec)
- 29.9 ±0.1
- Position epoch
- J1999.999
- Position known to
- 0.4 mas
- Dispersion measure
- 67.77 pc/cm³
OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS
The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.
- Associated with
- GRS:4FGL_J0835.3-4510[aab+22],SNR:Vela,GRS:HESS_J0835-455[aab+06c]
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 7 DESIGNATIONS- ATNF B0833-45
- ATNF J0835-4510
- ATNF PSR B0833-45
- ATNF PSR J0835-4510
- Common name PSR J0835-4510
- Common name Vela pulsar
- Common name Vela Pulsar
LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE
] 1 SERVICEEach link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.
- VizieR5″ around 128.8359 -45.1764
Every published table with a row at this position, searched by coordinates rather than by name.
CITE THIS PAGE
] DR1This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.
SpaceCatalog. Vela Pulsar [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j0835m4510
@misc{spacecatalog_psr-j0835m4510,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{Vela Pulsar}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j0835m4510},
note = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from ATNF Pulsar Catalogue (Manchester+ 2005).}
}The values above were taken from ATNF Pulsar Catalogue (Manchester+ 2005) — No licence stated; the database is ATNF/CSIRO property under the CSIRO Legal Notice and Disclaimer. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.
That catalogue asks for this acknowledgement: Manchester, R. N., Hobbs, G. B., Teoh, A. & Hobbs, M. 2005, AJ 129, 1993 (2005AJ....129.1993M); https://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/pulsar/psrcat
RECENT ACTIVITY
] 3 ITEMS- Prospects for Simultaneously Detecting Long and Short Duration Gravitational Waves from Pulsar Glitches with Current and Future Detectors2026-10-16 · arXiv · PAPER · M. Ball, D. Keitel
- Low-frequency spectra and scattering of pulsars towards the Gum Nebula with the MWA2026-10-13 · arXiv · PAPER · Ting Yu, Zhifu Gao, Zhongli Zhang, Weicong Jing
- Single-pulse reanalysis of the 2024 Vela glitch and new observations of PSR~J0437$-$4715 and PSR~J1644$-$45592026-09-02 · arXiv · PAPER · Carlos O. Lousto, Ruby Shrestha, Ezequiel Zubieta, Susana B. Araujo Furlan, Guillermo Gancio, Federico García
arXiv · UPDATED DAILY