Updating the Pulsar database

To make queries for pulsars faster, the ATNF pulsar catalogue has been duplicated within the MWA Image Plane Transient Classifier app. The Pulsar model has the following fields:

• name

• decj

• raj

• DM

• p0

• s400

The name is unique across all Pulsars, and every pulsar has at least an raj/decj. Other fields are filled if they are present in the ATNF pulsar catalogue.

Since the pulsar catalogue is periodically updated, a script has been created that will automate the process of retrieving the updated catalogue, and updating the Pulsar table within the MWA Image Plane Transient Classifier app.

To run the script, you need to ssh into the machine that is running the app and then run the following:

docker compose exec web manage.py refresh_pulsar_table

NB: The current ATNF website distributes a file called ‘psrcat.db’ which, despite the file extension, is NOT a database, but text file containing records for each pulsar. In the event that the format of this file changes the above script will likely fail.