PSR J0904-4246

NEUTRON STARPulsar

ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIOD 965 MS · FIELD 1.36×10¹² G · CHARACTERISTIC AGE 8 140 000 YR · SPIN-DOWN 8.25×10³¹ ERG/S

[

OVERVIEW

] NEUTRON STAR

PSR J0904-4246 is a in the constellation Vela, 2202 from Earth. Other catalogues list it as B0903-42 and PSR B0903-42.

WHAT IT IS
Pulsar
HOW FAR
2202

The light arriving now left it that long ago.

WHERE TO LOOK
Vela

The patch of sky it sits in, as seen from Earth.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see PSR J0904-4246 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.

TONIGHT

Say where you are, and this line says when PSR J0904-4246 is worth going out for.

[

APPARENT PLACE

] EQUINOX J2026.7

Where 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
12.6
PROPER MOTION SINCE
none published

Computed for 2026-09-08 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for PSR J0904-4246, so nothing here moves the object; what separates this from the catalogued position above is the coordinate grid turning under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. Aberration and refraction are not included, and neither is parallax; each is under an arcminute, which is also about as well as the catalogued position is known. The same figure for any date.

[

CATALOG DATA

] 7 FIELDS

The 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
1.36×10¹² G
Spin period
0.965174
Spin-down rate
1.88×10⁻¹⁵ /s
Characteristic age
8 142 933 yr
Spin-down luminosity
8.25×10³¹ 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
0.6 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.

Dispersion measure
145.88 pc/cm³
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 4 DESIGNATIONS
  • ATNF B0903-42
  • ATNF J0904-4246
  • ATNF PSR B0903-42
  • ATNF PSR J0904-4246
[

LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 1 SERVICE

Each 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.

[

CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This 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.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. PSR J0904-4246 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j0904m4246
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_psr-j0904m4246,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{PSR J0904-4246}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j0904m4246},
  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) — Free to use with attribution; cite Manchester+ 2005 (2005AJ....129.1993M). Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.

[

RELATED OBJECTS

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