The CatWISE2020 Catalog

The CatWISE2020 Catalog consists of 1,890,715,640 sources over the entire sky selected from Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and NEOWISE survey data at 3.4 and 4.6 mu m (W1 and W2) collected from 2010 January 7 to 2018 December 13. This data set adds two years to that used for the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog, bringing the total to six times as many exposures spanning over 16 times as large a time baseline as the AllWISE catalog. The other major change from the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog is that the detection list for the CatWISE2020 Catalog was generated using crowdsource from Schlafly et al., while the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog used the detection software used for AllWISE. These two factors result in roughly twice as many sources in the CatWISE2020 Catalog. The scatter with respect to Spitzer photometry at faint magnitudes in the COSMOS field, which is out of the Galactic Plane and at low ecliptic latitude (corresponding to lower WISE coverage depth) is similar to that for the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog. The 90% completeness depth for the CatWISE2020 Catalog is at W1 = 17.7 mag and W2 = 17.5 mag, 1.7 mag deeper than in the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog. In comparison to Gaia, CatWISE2020 motions are accurate at the 20 mas yr(-1) level for W1 similar to 15 mag sources and at the similar to 100 mas yr(-1) level for W1 similar to 17 mag sources. This level of accuracy represents a 12x improvement over AllWISE. The CatWISE catalogs are available in the WISE/NEOWISE Enhanced and Contributed Products area of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

Automated summary

The CatWISE2020 Catalog is composed of nearly 1.9 billion sources selected from WISE and NEOWISE survey data, with improved depth and accuracy compared to the Preliminary Catalog. The detection list was generated using a different method, resulting in twice as many sources. The catalog provides enhanced accuracy in motions and is available in the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.