© Anton Rijkers

While radio pulsars are most easily detectable in high time resolution observations by their periodic and dispersed pulses, they also are present as point sources in radio imaging surveys such as those performed with LoTSS.

In a recently published paper in A&A, we identified 80 known radio pulsars that were imaged as continuum sources at 144MHz in the 2nd data release of the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey. These detections provide astrometric positions and flux density measurements that average over the radio pulses and are not affected by propagation effects such as dispersion and scattering that impact high time resolution measurements.

This sample presents the majority (>86%) of radio pulsars present in the area covered by LoTSS DR2, indicating that the LoTSS images are a promising approach to identify new pulsar candidates based on their radio spectrum and polarization properties.

The panels in the figure show clear pulsar detections in most panels, with the LoTSS imaging providing additional information regarding position (panels c and i), LoTSS source identification (panels f and i) and possible source variability (panel h). Panel a) shows a radio pulsar with a poor localization where any of the LoTSS radio sources in the red circle could be the radio pulsar.

Link to paper: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/02/aa57471-25/aa57471-25.html