SAGE MIPS 70 Micron Catalog: Infrared Sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud

The Large Magellanic Cloud was surveyed by the Spitzer Space Telescope's SAGE Legacy Project to trace the life cycle of observable matter driving galactic evolution. The catalog contains over 6 million sources, including approximately 150,000 evolved stars and 50,000 young stellar objects, extracted from 70-micron MIPS instrument data. The data was produced by NASA and last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Identify and study evolved stars based on the catalog's inclusion of ~150,000 such sources.
• Analyze young stellar object populations using the ~50,000 YSOs identified in the survey.
• Investigate the diffuse interstellar medium in regions with column densities > 1.2×10^21 cm^-2.
• Search for potential counterparts to known astronomical sources using the full list of extracted sources.

Strengths

• Contains over 6 million sources, providing a large-scale view of the galaxy.
• Includes specific counts of scientifically important objects: ~150,000 evolved stars and ~50,000 young stellar objects.
• Sources were filtered with quality criteria, including a signal-to-noise requirement >5 and point-source correlation thresholds.

Limitations

• The final catalogs are estimated to contain less than 1% unreliable sources.
• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The 'Full Lists' contain all extracted sources, including spurious ones, requiring user caution.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope's MIPS instrument at 70 microns, part of the SAGE Legacy Project.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 20:05:48.392533

Geography

Large Magellanic Cloud