PSR J2238+5015

NEUTRON STARPulsar

ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIOD 560 MS · FIELD 1.51×10¹¹ G · CHARACTERISTIC AGE 2.22×10⁸ YR · SPIN-DOWN 8.99×10³⁰ ERG/S

[

OVERVIEW

] NEUTRON STAR

PSR J2238+5015 is a in the constellation Lacerta, 5401 from Earth.

WHAT IT IS
Pulsar
HOW FAR
5401

The light arriving now left it that long ago.

WHERE TO LOOK
Lacerta

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

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see PSR J2238+5015 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 J2238+5015 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
13.6
PROPER MOTION SINCE
none published

Computed for 2026-09-08 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for PSR J2238+5015, 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

] 6 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
1.51×10¹¹ G
Spin period
0.560097
Spin-down rate
4×10⁻¹⁷ /s
Characteristic age
2.22×10⁸ yr
Spin-down luminosity
8.99×10³⁰ erg/s

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
28.3 pc/cm³
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 2 DESIGNATIONS
  • ATNF J2238+5015
  • ATNF PSR J2238+5015
[

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 J2238+5015 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j2238p5015
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_psr-j2238p5015,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{PSR J2238+5015}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/psr-j2238p5015},
  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

] 8 LINKED