Daryl Yentis
(Naval Research Laboratory),
Ray Wolstencroft, Harvey MacGillivray
(Royal Observatory, Edinburgh),
Daniel Egret
(Infrared Processing and Analysis Center and CDS, Strasbourg),
and Tom Chester
(Infrared Processing and Analysis Center)
The OPTical IDentification ( OPTID ) database provides optical photographic
star and galaxy identifications to IRAS Faint Source Survey ( FSS ) sources
using two publicly available large-area optical catalogs derived from archival
Schmidt plate material using automatic plate measuring engines:
The COSMOS / UKST Southern Sky Object Catalogue (COSCAT), which
covers the sky south of 
and above galactic latitude
and contains stars and galaxies to b
=21 or fainter,
and the Guide Star Catalog version 1.1 ( GSC ) and the Tycho Input Catalog
( TIC ), which covers the entire sky and is complete for stars to
B=14--16th mag.
OPTID not only provides identification probabilities for each candidate
optical match to each FSS source, but also the probability each
infrared source has no match in each of the optical catalogs. A finding
chart service is also available. OPTID can be accessed via IPAC 's
remote access on-line catalog service, XCATSCAN , allowing
full database search capabilities utilizing both infrared, optical and
identification parameters.