Vela-Carina Catalog: High-Reliability Infrared Point Sources from Spitzer

99.5% reliable point sources from the Spitzer Space Telescope's Vela-Carina Galactic plane survey. This catalog covers 86 square degrees of the Carina and Vela regions, applying a '2+1' detection criterion across IRAC bands and 2MASS Ks. NASA produced the data, which was last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Classifying stellar objects based on infrared flux and position data.
• Mapping the density and distribution of stars in the Galactic plane.
• Training anomaly detection models using source quality and anomaly flags.
• Calibrating infrared photometry models with provided flux uncertainties.
• Studying specific regions like Carina and Vela for comparative galactic analysis.

Strengths

• Designed for high reliability, with an estimated spurious source rate of less than 0.5%.
• Covers a significant 86-square-degree area of the Galactic plane.
• Includes flux and position data with associated uncertainties for each band.
• Provides contextual metadata like local sky brightness and point source density.

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 ML.
• Data may reflect observational bias inherent to the Spitzer IRAC instrument and survey strategy.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) as part of the GLIMPSE-style Vela-Carina project.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 19:09:58.708192; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Galactic plane covering longitudes 255° < l < 295° (Carina and Vela regions).