Image Details
Caption: Figure 6.
Typical lifetimes of PSRs hosted by craters as a function of crater diameter, computed by calculating the intersection of measured PSR host crater frequencies with Neukum isochrons and the data from Figures 4 and 5. We truncate the VIPER data >350 m where count statistics are poor and exclude diameters <80 m in the pole-wide (non-VIPER) data because of the observed rollover at small sizes, which is likely an observation artifact. For craters smaller than 600 m diameter, lifetimes for PSRs inside craters decline rapidly. The lifetime of D ∼ 200–300 m PSRs is typically of order 1 Gyr (longest on the shallowest slopes); at D ∼ 100 m, PSRs typically last 100 Myr.
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.