AAS 203rd Meeting, January 2004
Session 57 Source Surveys
Poster, Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 9:20am-6:30pm, Hanover Hall

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[57.05] The COBE DIRBE Point Source Catalog

B. J. Smith (East Tennessee State University), S. D. Price (Air Force Research Laboratory), R. I. Baker (East Tennessee State University)

We present the COBE DIRBE Point Source Catalog, an all-sky catalog containing infrared photometry and variability information from the DIRBE instrument on the COBE satellite for the brightest near and mid-infrared point sources in the sky. From the DIRBE archives, we have extracted infrared light curves for 21,349 sources in ten infrared bands between 1.25 and 240 microns. Since the DIRBE spatial resolution is relatively poor (0.7 degrees), we have carefully investigated the question of confusion, and have flagged sources that have infrared-bright companions within the DIRBE beam. In addition, we have filtered the light curves for data points affected by companions outside of the main DIRBE beam but within the `sky' portion of the scan. Since DIRBE had excellent temporal coverage (200 - 1000 independent measurements per object during the 10 month cryogenic mission), the catalog also contains information about variability at each wavelength, including observed amplitudes of variation during the mission. At high Galactic latitudes (|b| > 5 degrees), the Catalog contains essentially all of the unconfused sources with flux densities greater than 75, 60, 60, 30, 90, and 165 Jy at 1.25, 2.2, 3.5, 4.9, 12, and 25 microns, respectively. At longer wavelengths and in the Galactic Plane, the completeness is less certain because of the large DIRBE beam and possible contributions from extended emission. The catalog is cross-referenced to also contain the names of the sources in other catalogs, and lists their spectral types, and whether or not the sources are known OH/IR stars.

This research was funded by NASA LTSA grant NAG5-13079.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: smithbj@etsu.edu

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.