unWISE Catalog
The unWISE Catalog contains the positions and fluxes of roughly two billion objects observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) over the full sky. The unWISE Catalog has two advantages over the existing WISE catalog (AllWISE): first, it is based on significantly deeper imaging, and second, it features improved modeling of crowded regions. The deeper imaging used in the unWISE Catalog comes from the coaddition of all publicly available 3-5 micron WISE imaging, including that from the ongoing NEOWISE-Reactivation mission, thereby increasing the total exposure time by a factor of 5 relative to AllWISE. At these depths, even at high Galactic latitudes many sources are blended with their neighbors; accordingly, the unWISE analysis simultaneously fits thousands of sources to obtain accurate photometry. The unWISE catalog detects sources at 5 sigma roughly 0.7 magnitudes fainter than the AllWISE catalog and more accurately models millions of faint sources in the Galactic plane, enabling a wealth of Galactic and extragalactic science. In particular, relative to AllWISE, unWISE doubles the number of galaxies detected between redshifts 0 and 1 and triples the number between redshifts 1 and 2, cataloging more than half a billion galaxies over the whole sky.
Complete Metadata
| @type | dcat:Dataset |
|---|---|
| accessLevel | public |
| bureauCode |
[
"026:00"
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|
| contactPoint |
{
"fn": "Tess Jaffe",
"@type": "vcard:Contact",
"hasEmail": "mailto:tess.jaffe@nasa.gov"
}
|
| description | The unWISE Catalog contains the positions and fluxes of roughly two billion objects observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) over the full sky. The unWISE Catalog has two advantages over the existing WISE catalog (AllWISE): first, it is based on significantly deeper imaging, and second, it features improved modeling of crowded regions. The deeper imaging used in the unWISE Catalog comes from the coaddition of all publicly available 3-5 micron WISE imaging, including that from the ongoing NEOWISE-Reactivation mission, thereby increasing the total exposure time by a factor of 5 relative to AllWISE. At these depths, even at high Galactic latitudes many sources are blended with their neighbors; accordingly, the unWISE analysis simultaneously fits thousands of sources to obtain accurate photometry. The unWISE catalog detects sources at 5 sigma roughly 0.7 magnitudes fainter than the AllWISE catalog and more accurately models millions of faint sources in the Galactic plane, enabling a wealth of Galactic and extragalactic science. In particular, relative to AllWISE, unWISE doubles the number of galaxies detected between redshifts 0 and 1 and triples the number between redshifts 1 and 2, cataloging more than half a billion galaxies over the whole sky. |
| distribution |
[
{
"@type": "dcat:Distribution",
"title": "Data Information (Unknown Format)",
"format": "BIN",
"mediaType": "application/octet-stream",
"downloadURL": "https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/SCS?table=unwise_2019&"
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{
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"title": "Data Information (HTML)",
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|
| identifier | ivo://irsa.ipac/wise/catalog/unwise |
| keyword |
[
"na"
]
|
| landingPage | https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/WISE/unWISE/gator_docs/unwise_colDescriptions.html |
| modified | 2026-02-17 |
| programCode |
[
"026:000"
]
|
| publisher |
{
"name": "NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive",
"@type": "org:Organization"
}
|
| theme |
[
"Astrophysics"
]
|
| title | unWISE Catalog |
