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 3-5 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.