Rotation-powered Pulsars - Significant Pulsars

Significant Pulsars

The pulsars listed here were either the first discovered of its type, or represent an extreme of some type among the known pulsar population, such as having the shortest measured period.

• The first radio pulsar CP 1919 (now known as PSR 1919+21), with a pulse period of 1.337 seconds and a pulse width of 0.04 second, was discovered in 1967.
• The first binary pulsar, PSR 1913+16, whose orbit is decaying at the exact rate predicted due to the emission of gravitational radiation by general relativity
• The first millisecond pulsar, PSR B1937+21
• The brightest millisecond pulsar, PSR J0437-4715
• The first X-ray pulsar, Cen X-3
• The first accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar, SAX J1808.4-3658
• The first pulsar with planets, PSR B1257+12
• The first double pulsar binary system, PSR J0737−3039
• The longest period pulsar, PSR J2144-3933
• The most stable pulsar in period, PSR J0437-4715
• PSR B1931+24 "... appears as a normal pulsar for about a week and then 'switches off' for about one month before emitting pulses again. this pulsar slows down more rapidly when the pulsar is on than when it is off. braking mechanism must be related to the radio emission and the processes creating it and the additional slow-down can be explained by the pulsar wind leaving the pulsar's magnetosphere and carrying away rotational energy."
• PSR J1748-2446ad, at 716 Hz, the pulsar with the highest rotation speed.
• PSR J1903+0327, a ~2.15 ms pulsar discovered to be in a highly eccentric binary star system with a sun-like star.
• A pulsar in the CTA 1 supernova remnant (4U 0000+72, in Cassiopeia) was found by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to emit pulsations only in gamma ray radiation, the first recorded of its kind.
• PSR J2007+2722, a 40.8-hertz 'recycled' isolated pulsar was the first pulsar found by volunteers on data taken in February 2007 and analyzed by distributed computing project Einstein@Home.
• PSR J1311–3430, the first millisecond pulsar discovered via gamma-ray pulsations and part of a binary system with the shortest orbital period.