Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer

Wise

WISE • Missions & Center • Operational

Overview:

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) provides an all-sky survey from 3 to 25 microns which is up to 500 times more sensitive than the IRAS survey. WISE will find the most luminous galaxies in the Universe, the closest stars to the Sun, detect most main belt asteroids larger than 3 km, and extend the 2MASS survey into the thermal infrared. WISE will also enable a wide variety of studies ranging from the evolution of protoplanetary debris discs to the history of star formation in normal galaxies. The survey will help search for the origins of planets, stars, and galaxies and create an infrared atlas whose legacy will endure for decades.

WISE launched on 14 December 2009.

IPAC's role:

IPAC is responsible for ingestion of raw WISE data, data processing to produce the final data products, and archiving mission science and engineering data. IPAC is also responsible for the distribution of WISE data to the community, in collaboration with the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive. The IPAC Communications team also supports WISE public affairs and public outreach by preparing all of the WISE images for public release into the image gallery. IPAC's WISE Image Gallery WISE's Mission Homepage Image Gallery.

July 31, 2012: NEOWISE Post-Cryo Preliminary Data Release

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).

For more info, please visit: NEOWISE Post-Cryo Preliminary Data Release.

March 14, 2012: All-Sky Data Release

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE; Wright et al. 2010) mapped the sky at 3.4, 4.6, 12, and 22 μm (W1, W2, W3, W4) in 2010 with an angular resolution of 6.1", 6.4", 6.5", & 12.0" in the four bands. WISE achieved 5σ point source sensitivities better than 0.08, 0.11, 1 and 6 mJy in unconfused regions on the ecliptic in the four bands. Sensitivity improves toward the ecliptic poles due to denser coverage and lower zodiacal background.

The All-Sky Release includes all data taken during the WISE full cryogenic mission phase, 7 January 2010 to 6 August 2010, that were processed with improved calibrations and reduction algorithms. Release data products include an Atlas of 18,240 match-filtered, calibrated and coadded image sets, a Source Catalog containing positional and photometric information for over 563 million objects detected on the WISE images, and an Explanatory Supplement that is a guide to the format, content, characteristics and cautionary notes for the WISE All-Sky Release products. The WISE All-Sky Data Release products supersede those from the April 2011 Preliminary Data Release.

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