The band-merged unWISE Catalog

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 3-5um 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. Our new catalog detects sources roughly 0.7mag fainter than the AllWISE catalog at 5{sigma}, and more accurately models millions of faint sources in the Galactic plane, enabling a wealth of Galactic and extragalactic science.