Planck PCCS2: Second Catalog of Compact Sources at 217 GHz

Planck, a European Space Agency mission launched in 2009, mapped the entire sky across frequencies from 30 to 857 GHz. The Second Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources (PCCS2) lists discrete Galactic and extragalactic objects detected from the full mission data, superseding earlier versions. It includes polarization measurements for seven channels and is divided into the PCCS2 and PCCS2E subcatalogs based on detection reliability in different sky regions.

Use Cases

• Identify extragalactic compact sources based on submillimeter and far-infrared emission.
• Study Galactic dust emission and foreground objects based on all-sky coverage.
• Analyze source polarization properties based on polarized flux density and angle measurements.
• Compare source populations with data from other missions like WMAP and IRAS based on overlapping and extended frequency ranges.

Strengths

• All-sky coverage from a dedicated space-based observatory.
• Includes polarization data for seven Planck channels.
• Improved completeness and reliability over previous catalog versions (PCCS, ERCSC).
• Data from the full duration of the Planck mission, launched in 2009.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

European Space Agency (ESA) Planck mission, with NASA contributions.

Collection Method

Detections from single-frequency maps of the full mission.

Time Range

Observations from the First Light Survey on 12 August 2009.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 20:06:16.027137; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Entire sky.