Gaia Pulsars and Where to Find Them in EDR3

Abstract

Abstract The Early Gaia Data Release 3 (EDR3) provides precise astrometry for nearly 1.5 billion sources across the entire sky. A few tens of these are associated with neutron stars in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. Here, we report on a search for EDR3 counterparts to known rotation-powered pulsars using the method outlined in Antoniadis. A cross-correlation between EDR3 and the ATNF pulsar catalog identifies 41 close astrometric pairs (≲05 at the reference epoch of the pulsar position). Twenty six of these are related to previously known optical counterparts, while the rest are candidate pairs that require further follow-up. Highlights include the Crab Pulsar (PSR B0531+21), for which EDR3 yields a distance of 2.08 − 0.45 + 0.78 kpc (or 2.00 − 0.38 + 0.56 kpc taking into account the dispersion-measure prior; errors indicate 95% confidence limits) and PSR 1638−4608, a pulsar thus-far considered to be isolated that lies within 0056 of a Gaia source.