SAGE IRAC Archive: Spitzer Telescope Photometry of the Large Magellanic Cloud

The Spitzer Space Telescope SAGE Legacy Project archive provides photometric data on over 6 million sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud, collected by NASA. It includes fluxes for evolved stars, young stellar objects, and the diffuse interstellar medium to study galactic evolution. The archive contains more source fluxes than the catalog but with associated uncertainties, using a signal-to-noise threshold of 5 across four IRAC bands.

Use Cases

• Modeling the lifecycle of galactic matter based on identified evolved stars and young stellar objects.
• Analyzing the physical processes of the interstellar medium based on column density measurements.
• Comparing stellar populations and star formation rates using photometric fluxes from multiple infrared bands.
• Studying galaxy-wide relationships between stellar mass injection and new star formation.

Strengths

• Contains over 6 million sources, including approximately 150,000 evolved stars and 50,000 young stellar objects.
• Provides fundamental insights on a galaxy-wide scale for the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• Includes source fluxes for four IRAC bands (3.6um, 4.5um, 5.8um, 8.0um) with defined signal-to-noise criteria.

Limitations

• The archive additions have more uncertainty associated with them compared to the catalog.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Observational data from the Spitzer Space Telescope's SAGE Legacy Project survey.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 20:08:59.595788; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Large Magellanic Cloud