Most of the WISE science data products are distributed to the community via the online and computer-compatible services of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA).
The WISE archive contains the 3-Band Cryo Source Working Database extracted from the coadded Atlas Images, the Single-exposure Source Database, that provides positions and photometry measured from the individual WISE 3-Band Cryo exposures, and metadata tables associated with the Atlas and Single-exposure images and source tables. Logical queries on the WISE 3-Band Cryo Release Databases can be made via the IRSA/Gator online query engine. Gator enables searches on any Table attribute, such as position, brightness, color, quality flags, etc., or combinations thereof. Queries may be submitted using either a simple "Query-By-Table" form or with user-customizable SQL input. For example, one common query type is to search for all sources within a specified sky region, which can be most efficiently achieved using the query panel with spatial constraints.
Note: Gator is not designed to support very large downloads of the WISE Catalogs or Databases. Specifically, if the return data volume exceeds 2Gb, Gator will truncate the query. So be cautious when your return table is close to 2Gb in size. See below for Database bulk download instructions.
Image data available in the WISE archive include the coadded 3-Band Cryo Atlas Images and Single-exposure (Level 1b) images. These FITS format images, including science intensity images, uncertainty maps, depth-of-coverage (for the Atlas Images) and Bit-mask maps (for Single-exposure images) are accessed using the IRSA WISE Image Archive Service. This web-based interface enables selection, display and retrieval of any or all Atlas Images and Single-exposure images based on position and time (in the case of the Single-exposure images) of observation using the information stored in the image metadata. The returned images are in the native pixel format and projection of the image products. Both interactive and batch requests are supported by the image service.
Use the WISE Tile Lookup Tool to determine if a specified position or object name lies in an Atlas Tile that is part of the 3-Band Cryo Release, and if so, in which Tile it can be found.
IRSA provides program-friendly interfaces to query and retrieve tabular and image data from the WISE mission. These URL-accessible services provide query and download functionality that can be accessed directly from a web browser, or by writing and running a simple "wget" or "curl" script on their local Unix system. Documentation on using these services is available on the IRSA site via the following links:
IRSA catalog query service (Gator) program interface documentation
IRSA image query service program interface documentation
The WISE 3-Band Cryo Source Working Database and Single-exposure Source Database are available in compressed bzip2 ASCII form for bulk download at
https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/download/
The Databases are divided into multiple, separate compressed files, each file containing the source records within a distinct declination band. Wget scripts are available at the above URL to download all of the Database parts. The tables are formatted in a simple bar-delimited manner consistent with convenient loading into a database server. The column order and contents of the columns are as described in Section VII.2.a.i and VII.2.c.i.
Be aware that the Database Tables are extremely large, even in bzip2-compressed format. Please follow the links for each of the tables to determine how much storage space is required to download and unpack the tables.
Last update: 2017 June 8