unWISE Catalog: Two Billion Infrared Objects with Improved Crowded-Region Modeling

Roughly two billion objects are cataloged in this dataset from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The catalog, produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is based on coadded imaging that is five times deeper than the previous AllWISE release. It detects sources about 0.7 magnitudes fainter and significantly increases galaxy counts at cosmological redshifts.

Use Cases

• Identify faint infrared sources based on the deeper 3-5 micron coadded imaging.
• Model crowded regions like the Galactic plane based on the simultaneous fitting of thousands of sources.
• Study galaxy evolution based on the increased detection of galaxies between redshifts 0 and 2.
• Perform all-sky infrared source cross-matching based on the positions and fluxes of two billion objects.

Strengths

• Contains positions and fluxes for roughly two billion objects observed over the full sky.
• Based on coadded imaging increasing total exposure time by a factor of 5 relative to the AllWISE catalog.
• Detects sources at 5 sigma roughly 0.7 magnitudes fainter than the previous catalog.
• Doubles galaxy counts between redshifts 0-1 and triples counts between redshifts 1-2.

Limitations

• 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

Coaddition of all publicly available 3-5 micron WISE imaging, including data from the NEOWISE-Reactivation mission.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 19:34:43.491260; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Full sky.