The ISOPHOT 170 μm serendipity survey -: IV.: The far-infared sky atlas

Aims. To further increase the scientific utilization of the strip scanning measurements of the ISOPHOT Serendipity Survey ( ISOSS), the slew data has been assembled to a sky atlas with approximate to 15% sky coverage in the hitherto unobserved far-infrared wavelength band around 170 mu m. Methods. The redundant information of the brightnesses at slew crossings has been used to globally rescale and homogenize the slew brightnesses, leading to significantly increased photometric accuracy and reproducibility as well as the homogeneity of the maps. The corrected slew data were mapped with a constant grid size of 22.'' 4 and are presented in 124 maps in galactic coordinates. Results. The collection of image plates represents the ISOSS Sky Atlas, which will become available from major data archives. Exemplary scientific results are described, which show the scientific potential of the data set combined with far-infrared imaging data from previous and upcoming missions.