HEASARC Browse: List of WISE Catalogs

List of WISE Catalogs

This table contains an all-sky sample of ~1.4 million active galactic nuclei (AGNs) meeting a two-color infrared photometric selection criterion for AGNs as applied to sources from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer final catalog release (AllWISE). The authors assess the spatial distribution and optical properties of their sample and find that the results are consistent with expectations for AGNs. These sources have a mean density of ~38 AGNs per square degree on the sky, and their apparent magnitude distribution peaks at g ~ 20, extending to objects as faint as g ~ 26. The authors test the AGN selection criterion against a large sample of optically identified stars and determine the "leakage" (that is, the probability that a star detected in an optical survey will be misidentified as a quasi-stellar object (QSO) in their sample) rate to be <= 4.0 x 10^-5. They conclude that their sample contains almost no optically identified stars (<= 0.041%), making this sample highly promising for future celestial reference frame work as it significantly increases the number of all-sky, compact extragalactic objects. The authors further compare their sample to catalogs of known AGNs/QSOs and find a completeness value of >= 84% (that is, the probability of correctly identifying a known AGN/QSO is at least 84%) for AGNs brighter than a limiting magnitude of R <= 19. This sample includes approximately 1.1 million previously uncataloged AGNs.

The WISE survey is an all-sky mid-IR survey at 3.4, 4.6, 12, and 22 microns (W1, W2, W3, and W4, respectively) conducted between 2010 January 7 and August 6, during the cryogenic mission phase, and first made available to the public on 2011 April 14. WISE has angular resolutions of 6.1, 6.4, 6.5, and 12.0 arcseconds in its four bands, respectively. The AllWISE data release, which was used for this work, incorporates data from the WISE Full Cryogenic, 3-Band Cryo, and NEOWISE Post-Cryo survey (Mainzer et al. 2014, ApJ, 792, 30) phases, which were co-added to achieve a depth of coverage ~0.4 mag deeper than previous data releases. AllWISE contains the positions, apparent motions, magnitudes, and point-spread function (PSF)-profile fit information for almost 748 million objects. Astrometric calibration of sources in the WISE catalog was done by correlation with bright stars from the 2MASS point source catalog, and the astrometric accuracy for sources in the AllWISE release was further improved by taking into account the proper motions of these reference stars, taken from the fourth USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC4, Zacharias et al. 2013, AJ, 145, 44). A comparison with ICRF sources shows that AllWISE Catalog sources in the brightness range of 8 < W1 < 12 mag have positional accuracies to within 50 mas, and half of these sources have positional accuracies to within 20 mas. For more details on the WISE mission, see Wright et al. (2010, AJ, 140, 1868).

The authors took all sources from the AllWISE catalog following Equations (3) and (4) from Mateos et al. (2012, MNRAS, 426, 3271) and they require that all of their sources have S/N >= 5 in the first three bands, as recommended in Mateos et al. (2012); as a further constraint, they limit their results to those with cc_flags = "0000," meaning that the sources are unaffected by known artifacts such as diffraction spikes, persistence, halos, or optical ghosts.

In order to characterize the optical properties of their sample, the authors cross-matched it to SDSS-DR12, which is the final data release of SDSS-III (Eisenstein et al. 2011, AJ, 142, 72), within a radial tolerance of R < 1", obtaining 424,366 matches. To determine the fraction of false positive positional matches (that is, incorrectly correlating an object in their sample with a different SDSS object due to random positional agreement), they performed the same match on a scrambled version of their sample coordinates, determining that less than 1% of other cross-matches are false positive positional matches between the two catalogs. The authors also cross-matched their sample sources with he second release of the Large Quasar Astrometric Catalog (LQAC-2; Souchay et al. 2012, A&A, 537, A99), which contains 187,504 quasars, including radio-selected quasars from the ICRF2, optically selected quasars from SDSS, and infrared-selected quasars from 2MASS, and thus represents a robust sample of quasars over a wide range of wavelengths. They find that 93,403 quasars from LQAC-2 have clean detections. The majority of non-detections are due to sources in LQAC-2 that are too faint, having R >~ 19.

NWAYAWGROS Catalog

This table contains the 132,254 AllWISE counterparts and/or Gaia matches to 106,573 X-ray sources detected in the ROSAT 2RXS survey with Galactic latitude |b| > 15 degrees. These are the brightest X-ray sources in the sky, but their position uncertainties and the sparse multi-wavelength coverage until now rendered the identification of their counterparts a demanding task with uncertain results. New all-sky multi-wavelength surveys of sufficient depth, like AllWISE and Gaia, and a new Bayesian statistics-based algorithm, NWAY, allow us, for the first time, to provide reliable counterpart associations.

NWAY extends previous distance- and sky density-based association methods and, using one or more priors (e.g. colors, magnitudes), weights the probability that sources from two or more catalogs are simultaneously associated on the basis of their observable characteristics. Here, counterparts have been determined using a Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) color-magnitude prior. A reference sample of 4,524 XMM/Chandra and Swift X-ray sources demonstrates a reliability of 94.7 per cent for 2RXS sources. Combining the results of this work and of the matching of XMM-Newton Slew Survey, Version 2 (XMMSL2) sources also reported in this study (the results of the latter are available as the HEASARC's database table NWAYAWGXMM) with Chandra-COSMOS data, the authors propose a new separation between stars and AGN in the X-ray/WISE flux-magnitude plane, that is valid over six orders of magnitude. The authors also release the NWAY code and its user manual. NWAY was extensively tested with XMM-COSMOS data.

Using two different sets of priors, the authors find an agreement of 96 per cent and 99 per cent with published Likelihood Ratio methods. Their results were achieved faster and without any follow-up visual inspection. With the advent of deep and wide area surveys in X-rays (e.g. SRG/eROSITA, Athena/WFI) and radio (ASKAP/EMU, LOFAR, APERTIF, etc.), NWAY will provide a powerful and reliable counterpart identification tool.

For all the available options, see the NWAY manual at https://github.com/JohannesBuchner/nway/raw/master/doc/nway-manual.pdf.

NWAYAWGXMM Catalog

This table contains the 19,141 AllWISE counterparts and/or Gaia matches to 17,665 X-ray sources detected in the XMM-Newton Slew Survey, Version 2 (hereafter XMMSL2, currently available at the HEASARC as the XMMSLEWCLN table) list of 'Clean' sources that lie at Galactic latitude |b| > 15 degrees. These are among the brightest X-ray sources in the sky, but their position uncertainties and the sparse multi-wavelength coverage until now have rendered the identification of their counterparts a demanding task with uncertain results. New all-sky multi-wavelength surveys of sufficient depth, like AllWISE and Gaia, and a new Bayesian statistics-based algorithm, NWAY, allow us, for the first time, to provide reliable counterpart associations.

NWAY extends previous distance- and sky density-based association methods and, using one or more priors (e.g. colors, magnitudes), weights the probability that sources from two or more catalogs are simultaneously associated on the basis of their observable characteristics. Here, counterparts have been determined using a Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) color-magnitude prior. A reference sample of 4,524 XMM/Chandra and Swift X-ray sources demonstrates a reliability of 97.4 per cent for XMMSL2 sources. Combining the results of this work and of the matching of ROSAT All-Sky Survey 2RXS sources also reported in this study (the results of the latter are available as the HEASARC's database table NWAYAWGROS) with Chandra-COSMOS data, the authors propose a new separation between stars and AGN in the X-ray/WISE flux-magnitude plane, that is valid over six orders of magnitude. The authors also release the NWAY code and its user manual. NWAY was extensively tested with XMM-COSMOS data.

For all the available options, see the NWAY manual at https://github.com/JohannesBuchner/nway/raw/master/doc/nway-manual.pdf.

UVQS Catalog

This table contains data from the first data release (DR1) from the UV-bright Quasar Survey (UVQS) for new z ~ 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) across the sky. Using simple GALEX UV and WISE near-IR color selection criteria, the authors generated a list of 1,450 primary candidates with FUV < 18.5 mag, that is contained in the HEASARC table (entries with source_sample = 'P'). They obtained discovery spectra, primarily on 3m-class telescopes, for 1,040 of these candidates and confirmed 86% as AGN, with redshifts generally at z > 0.5. Including a small set of observed secondary candidates, the authors report the discovery of 217 AGN with GALEX FUV magnitudes < 18 mag that previously had no reported spectroscopic redshifts. These are excellent potential targets for UV spectroscopy before the end of the Hubble Space Telescope mission. The main data products of UVQS are publicly available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST).

The authors have performed an all-sky survey for z ~ 1, FUV-bright quasars selected from GALEX and WISE photometry. In several of the observing runs, conditions were unexpectedly favorable and we exhausted the primary candidates at certain right ascension ranges. To fill the remaining observing time, they generated a secondary candidate list. This secondary set of 2,010 candidates is also contained in this HEASARC table (entries with source_sample = 'S').

The authors proceeded to obtain discovery-quality long-slit spectra (i.e., low-dispersion, large-wavelength coverage, modest signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of their UV-bright Quasar Survey (UVQS) candidates in one calendar year. The principal facilities were: (i) the dual Kast spectrometer on the 3m Shane telescope at the Lick Observatory; (ii) the Boller & Chivens (BCS) spectrometer on the Irenee du Pont 100-inch telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory; and (iii) the Calar Alto Faint Object Spectrograph on the CAHA 2.2-meter telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA). They acquired an additional ~20 spectra on larger aperture telescopes (Keck/ESI, MMT/MBC, Magellan/MagE) during twilight or under poor observing conditions. Typical exposure times were limited to < ~200s, with adjustments for fainter sources or sub-optimal observing conditions. Table 3 in the reference paper provides a list of the details of the observations of these candidates. From the total candidates list of 3,460 objects, the authors measured high-quality redshifts (redshift quality flag values of 3 or greater) for 1,121 sources. They assumed that every source with a recessional velocity v_r = z * c < 500 km s^-1 was "Galactic", which they associate with the Galaxy and members of the Local Group. This included sources where the eigenspectra fits were poor yet a low v_r was indisputable (e.g., stars). Many of these were assigned z = 0 exactly. The remainder of the UVQS sources were assumed to be extragalactic AGN, and the derived redshift information for these sources (which was given in Table 4 of the reference paper) has been incorporated into this HEASARC representation of UVQS. Finally, there were 93 sources with good-quality spectra for which we cannot the authors could not recover a secure redshift. The majority of these have been previously cataloged as blazars (or BL Lac objects). Table 6 in the reference paper lists the sample of these unknown or insecure redshift objects.

WIBRALS Catalog

This table contains a catalog of radio-loud candidate gamma-ray emitting blazars with WISE mid-infrared colors similar to the colors of confirmed gamma-ray blazars. The catalog is assembled from WISE sources detected in all four WISE filters, with colors that are compatible with the three-dimensional locus of the WISE gamma-ray emitting blazars, and which can be spatially cross-matched with radio sources from one of the three radio surveys: NVSS, FIRST, and/or SUMSS. The authors' initial WISE selection uses a slightly modified version of previously successful algorithms. They then select only the radio-loud sources using a measure of the radio-to-IR flux, the q₂₂ parameter, which is analogous to the q₂₄ parameter known in the literature but which instead uses the WISE band-four flux at 22 micron (um). Their final catalog contains 7,855 sources classified as BL Lacs, FSRQs, or mixed candidate blazars; 1,295 of these sources can be spatially re-associated as confirmed blazars. In their paper, the authors describe the properties of the final catalog of WISE blazar-like radio-loud sources and consider possible contaminants. Finally, they discuss why this large catalog of candidate gamma-ray emitting blazars represents a new and useful resource to address the problem of finding low-energy counterparts to currently unidentified high-energy sources.

The WISE magnitudes in the [3.4], [4.6], [12] and [22] um nominal filters are in the Vega system. The values of three WISE magnitudes, namely [3.4], [4.6], and [12], and of the colors derived using those magnitudes, have been corrected for galactic extinction according to the extinction law presented by Draine (2003, ARA&A, 41, 241). In their study, the authors adopt the nomenclature proposed in the Multi-wavelength Blazar Catalog (BZCat) that labels BL Lac objects as 'BZBs' and flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) as 'BZQs'.

WISEHSPCAT Catalog

High Synchrotron Peaked blazars (HSPs) dominate the gamma-ray sky at energies larger than a few GeV, however only a few hundred blazars of this type have been catalogued so far. In this paper, the authors present the 2WHSP sample, the largest and most complete list of HSP blazars available to date, which is an expansion of the 1WHSP catalog (Arsioli et al. 2015, A&A, 579, A34) of gamma-ray source candidates away from the Galactic Plane. They cross-matched a number of multi-wavelength surveys (in the radio, infrared and X-ray bands) and applied selection criteria based on the radio to IR, and IR to X-ray spectral slopes. To ensure the selection of genuine HSPs, the authors examined the spectral energy distribution (SED) of each candidate and estimated the peak frequency of its synchrotron emission (nu_peak) using the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana Science Data Center (ASDC) SED tool, including only sources with nu_peak > 10¹⁵ Hz (equivalent to nu_peak > 4 eV).

The authors have assembled the largest and most complete catalog of HSP blazars to date, which includes 1691 sources. A number of population properties, such as infrared colors, synchrotron peak, redshift distributions, and gamma-ray spectral properties, have been used to characterize the sample and maximize completeness. The authors also derived the radio log N - log S distribution. This catalog has already been used to provide seeds to discover new very high energy objects within Fermi-LAT data and to look for the counterparts of neutrino and ultra-high energy cosmic ray sources, showing its potential for the identification of promising high-energy gamma-ray sources and multi-messenger targets.

This table comprises the 2WHSP catalog, a multi-frequency catalog of HSP. It contains 1691 sources, 288 of which are newly identified HSPs, 540 are previously known HSPs, 814 are HSP candidates, 45 are HSP blazars taken from the 2FHL catalog, and 4 from TeVCat (http://tevcat.uchicago.edu).

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