Planck PCCS2: Full-Sky Catalog of Compact Sources at 857 GHz

The Second Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources (PCCS2) lists discrete Galactic and extragalactic objects detected across the entire sky from the full duration of the Planck mission, which operated from 2009. It supersedes earlier versions and includes sources detected at frequencies from 30 to 857 GHz, with polarization data for seven channels. The catalog was produced by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, with contributions from the Low Frequency Instrument Data Processing Center.

Use Cases

• Separating Galactic foreground emission from the cosmic microwave background based on multi-frequency detection.
• Studying the properties of extragalactic compact sources like galaxies and quasars detected in submillimeter wavelengths.
• Analyzing source polarization using the polarized flux densities and orientation angles included for seven Planck channels.
• Creating high-reliability subsamples of sources from the PCCS2 catalog for statistical analysis.

Strengths

• Covers the entire sky, providing a full-sky survey of compact sources.
• Includes polarization measurements for seven frequency channels, offering additional physical data.
• Improves upon previous catalogs with increased object counts and completeness for a target 80% reliability.
• Based on the full-mission data from Planck, with improved processing and reduced noise levels.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

European Space Agency (ESA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Planck mission.

Collection Method

Detected in single-frequency maps from the Planck satellite's continuous sky measurements.

Time Range

Mission data from the First Light Survey on 12 August 2009 through the full mission duration.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 16:31:34.021784; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Full celestial sky coverage.