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IV. AllWISE Image Atlas

IV.5. Full-Depth Ecliptic Polar Atlas Images

  1. Description and Contents
  2. Access the WISE Full-Depth Ecliptic Polar Atlas Image Sets

IV.5.a. Description and Contents

The WISE survey scanning strategy resulted in frameset depth-of-coverage that increased with increasing ecliptic latitude. Over the course of the 13 months of WISE Cryo and Post-cryo operations, 24 independent Single-exposures were typically accumulated at each point on the sky near the Ecliptic plane, and over 6000 exposures were obtained directly at the north and south Ecliptic poles. The extremely large number of framesets involved with Tiles near the Poles exceeded the processing memory and runtime capabilities for source extraction, so coverage was artificially limited to an average depth of approximately 165 framesets for 73 Tiles near the Ecliptic poles (36 in the north and 37 in the south) during the AllWISE Multiframe Pipeline processing.

Although source extraction using all of the available Single-exposure framesets was not feasible for these 73 Tiles, the full-depth coadded image products were constructed using all framesets that satisfied the basic selection criteria described in V.1.b. These full-depth image sets are provided to augment the AllWISE Atlas Images.

The AllWISE Full-Depth Ecliptic Polar Atlas Image sets have the same basic format and content as the standard AllWISE Atlas Images. The image products are in the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format and follow the World Coordinate System (WCS) standard for astronomical image data. Each of the images and maps contains 4095x4095 pix @1.375"/pix. One image set is produced for each of the 73 Atlas Tiles for which coverage was attenuated for the AllWISE Atlas and Enhanced Source Catalog. Each image set consists of:

The Full-Depth Ecliptic Polar Atlas Image products have filenames that follow the same convention as the AllWISE Atlas Images:

where BAND = 1, 2, 3, or 4, and COADDID is a unique identification string pertaining to the sky footprint (see II.2.a). The disambiguation string in the COADDID is ac52 for Full-Depth Polar Atlas Images (it is ac51 for the AllWISE Atlas Images). The Full-Depth Polar Atlas Image FITS header content is the same as for the AllWISE Atlas Images, and is described in IV.1.b.

Because the Full-Depth Polar Atlas Images were generated using the same algorithms as the AllWISE Atlas Images, they are subject to the same issues and limitations. Please read the Cautionary Notes for the AllWISE Atlas Images.

Access to the Full-Depth Ecliptic Polar Atlas Image sets, along with cross-reference tables that contain the individual framesets used in each coadd, is available via the links in Table 1, below.

IV.5.b. Access the AllWISE Full-Depth Ecliptic Polar Atlas Image Sets

You may retrieve the image data and Atlas/Frame cross-reference information files for the 73 Full-Depth Ecliptic Polar Atlas Tiles using the links in Table 1 below.


Last update: 23 April 2021

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