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| WISE catalogues | |
|---|---|
| Name | WISE |
| Mission | Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer |
| Operator | NASA |
| Launch | 2009 |
| Wavelength | Infrared |
| Status | Completed (survey phase) |
WISE catalogues
The WISE catalogues are comprehensive astronomical source lists derived from data obtained by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, produced and distributed by teams at institutions including NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, and collaborating groups at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles. These catalogues underpin research across fields such as planetary science, stellar evolution, galaxy formation, and cosmology, and have been incorporated into major resources maintained by the European Space Agency, the Smithsonian Institution, and national data centers like the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The mission delivered all-sky imaging in multiple infrared bands, enabling catalogues that list positions, fluxes, and quality metrics for hundreds of millions of sources. Production involved collaborations among the WISE Team, the AllWISE Project, and follow-up efforts that include the NEOWISE reactivation and legacy processing by teams at the Planetary Science Institute and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The product suite supports cross-matching with surveys from observatories such as Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Two Micron All Sky Survey, Gaia, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Herschel Space Observatory.
Raw data were collected by a cryogenically cooled telescope and processed through pipelines developed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with calibration tied to standards from the Cohen standards and photometric systems used by IRAS, AKARI, and SIRTF. Processing steps included artifact mitigation, background subtraction, mosaicking with algorithms from groups at the University of Arizona and Boston University, astrometric alignment with the International Celestial Reference Frame as delivered by International Astronomical Union standards, and photometric calibration aligned to the Vega magnitude system and cross-checked against the AB magnitude system. Teams applied software tools developed at the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Primary products include the WISE Source Catalogs, single-exposure tables, coadded image stacks, and enhanced releases such as AllWISE and NEOWISE-R. These have been integrated into archives operated by the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg, and the European Space Agency Science Archives. Catalogues are frequently cross-referenced with databases maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the International Virtual Observatory Alliance standards, and are used in value-added products by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey consortium, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope preparatory teams, and teams associated with the Square Kilometre Array pathfinders.
Photometric measurements in multiple bands enabled color-based classification schemes developed by researchers at Caltech, Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. Techniques include profile-fitting photometry, aperture photometry, and model-based deconvolution from groups at the University of Oxford and University College London. Classifications separate stellar sources, extragalactic objects, active galactic nuclei studied by teams at the European Southern Observatory, and moving objects such as asteroids analyzed in coordination with the Minor Planet Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory small-body groups. Catalog flags and quality metrics were designed with input from the American Astronomical Society and standards used by the International Astronomical Union.
WISE catalogue data underpin studies of star formation in regions mapped by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, discovery of brown dwarfs by researchers at the University of Hawaii and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, demographic studies of active galactic nuclei correlated with results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and characterization of near-Earth objects in conjunction with the Pan-STARRS consortium and the Catalina Sky Survey. The catalogues have been instrumental in identifying targets for follow-up with facilities like the Keck Observatory, the Very Large Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope, and have contributed to multiwavelength studies combining data from GALEX, Planck, and the Subaru Telescope.
Users must account for limitations arising from instrumental artifacts, saturation effects known from analyses by teams at the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confusion noise in the Galactic plane studied by groups at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, and photometric systematics investigated by researchers at the University of Toronto and University of Michigan. Astrometric uncertainties are tied to reference catalogs such as 2MASS and Gaia, and completeness varies with ecliptic latitude and cirrus contamination highlighted by studies from the Space Science Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Catalogues and image products are accessible via interfaces provided by the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg VizieR service, and services at the European Space Agency. Community tools for querying and cross-matching have been developed by projects at the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, the Astropy Project, and the TOPCAT development team. Data release notes, documentation, and pipelines are archived by institutions including Caltech, JPL, and the IPAC science center for reproducible research.
Category:Infrared astronomy Category:Astronomical catalogues