Bright stars produce a number of artifacts in the NEOWISE Single-exposure images that can trigger spurious detections or contaminate the measurement of real sources. An effort is made during data processing to identify spurious and/or contaminated detections, and identify them using the cc_flags column in the Single-exposure Source Database.
The parameters and algorithms used for artifact identification and flagging for NEOWISE are mostly unchanged from those used for the primary mission Post-Cryo Single-exposure data processing (see VIII.3.d in the WISE All-Sky Release Explanatory Supplement). The one exception is that for NEOWISE the threshold for detection of short-term latents is substantially lower to improve the completeness of short-term-latent flagging. Additional modifications were made for internal optimizations, but they produce no externally visible consequences.
Last update: 18 March 2024