NEOWISE Post-cryo Preliminary Data Release

Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 • Announcement • ipac2012-007

The NEOWISE Post-Cryo Preliminary Release consists of over 900,000 3.4 and 4.6 micron images and a database of over 4.9 billion source detections extracted from those images, acquired by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE; Wright et al. 2010 AJ, 140, 1868) between September 29, 2010 and February 1, 2011 after the satellite's solid hydrogen cryogen was completely exhausted.  During this 115 day period, known as the NEOWISE Post-Cryo survey phase, the telescope and payload warmed to approximately 73.5 K, and the 3.4 and 4.6 micron detectors continued to operate with nearly the same sensitivity as in the full cryogenic mission phase with only a small increase in the number of high noise pixels.  WISE obtained multiple, independent observations of approximately 70% of the sky during the Post-Cryo phase, completing a survey of the inner Main Asteroid Belt and a second coverage epoch of the inertial sky.  WISE Post-Cryo survey operations and science data processing are funded by the NASA Planetary Division as part of the NEOWISE program (Mainzer et al. 2011, ApJ, 731, 53).

The NEOWISE Post-Cryo Preliminary Release products are useful for providing the individual flux measurements for solar system objects that were identified by the NEOWISE Moving Object Pipeline, as well as for studying time-dependent properties of inertial sources found in the WISE All-Sky Release Catalog. The All-Sky Release remains the best compendium of sources of mid-infrared emission over the entire sky.

The NEOWISE Post-Cryo Preliminary Release products were generated using very early calibrations and reductions that were not yet optimized for the warm system performance.  The Post-Cryo Single-exposure data will undergo a complete second-pass processing in late 2012 that will utilize improved calibrations and algorithms that are optimized for the characteristics of the detectors and optics during the Post-Cryo phase.  The improved Post-Cryo data products will be released in 2013.

A quick guide to the Release data products, data access instructions and supporting documentation is available at
http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/postcryo_prelim/. Access to the WISE data products is available via the on-line services of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu).

Research using WISE and NEOWISE data products is eligible for support under the NASA ROSES Astrophysics and Planetary Mission Data Analysis Programs.

WISE is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology.  NEOWISE is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology. WISE and NEOWISE are funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.