PSR J0959-4809
ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIOD 670 MS · FIELD 2.42×10¹¹ G · CHARACTERISTIC AGE 1.25×10⁸ YR · SPIN-DOWN 1.12×10³¹ ERG/S
OBSERVING
FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see PSR J0959-4809 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 PSR J0959-4809 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
- 12.9
- PROPER MOTION SINCE
- none published
Computed for 2026-10-23 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for PSR J0959-4809, 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. The catalogued place is itself known to 78 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
8 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
- 2.42×10¹¹ G
- Spin period
- 0.670086
- Spin-down rate
- 8.52×10⁻¹⁷ /s
- Characteristic age
- 1.25×10⁸ yr
- Spin-down luminosity
- 1.12×10³¹ 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
- 4 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.
- Position known to
- 78 mas
- Dispersion measure
- 92.64 pc/cm³
ALSO KNOWN AS
4 DESIGNATIONS- ATNF B0957-47
- ATNF J0959-4809
- ATNF PSR B0957-47
- ATNF PSR J0959-4809
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 149.8592 -48.1632
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. PSR J0959-4809 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j0959m4809
@misc{spacecatalog_psr-j0959m4809,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{PSR J0959-4809}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j0959m4809},
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