IRAS Explanatory Supplement
X. The Formats of the IRAS Catalogs and Atlases
B. Point Sources
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The information about infrared point sources is presented in increasing detail, progressing from the printed volumes to the tape version of the catalog to the detailed description of the observational and processing history of each source in a file known as the Working Survey Data Base (WSDB) augmented by its ancillary file. The printed version (Section X.B.2) is intended for users at the telescope or at institutions without computerized information retrieval systems. The catalog tape (Section X.B.1) is intended for astronomers desiring to make statistical studies and to search the catalog for large numbers of sources. The WSDB and ancillary file (Section X.B.3) are meant to give the sophisticated researcher all the available data on any given source such as its brightness on each hours-confirmed sighting, the detectors involved and the details of the data reduction such as confusion with neighboring sources.
Another catalog available only in machine readable form lists the WSDB entries for all sources that failed one or more of the confirmation and confusion criteria and were not, thus, included in the main catalog. This file of REJECTED sources includes spurious objects, including: processing failures, space debris, asteroids and comets, and celestial sources that, due to incompleteness at faint levels or to variability, failed to achieve the minimum criterion of two hours-confirmed sightings. In regions of high source density the file includes sources rejected by the more severe criteria for reliability applied there (Section V.H.6). Caveat emptor.
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