VarWISE Catalog Definitions

Overview

The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Explorer (NEOWISE) mission provides a decade of all-sky time-series data at 3.4 and 4.6 um and an unprecedented opportunity for the discovery and characterization of variable objects. VarWISE catalogs infrared-variable objects discovered within the NEOWISE single-exposure data. VarWISE employs unique methodologies, including the spatial clustering of apparitions and the adoption of novel machine learning-based variable detection (VARnet) and classification (XGBoost) to identify and characterize significant variability. The catalog includes a prediction of variable object type and best-fit period values for each object, if its variations are cyclical, along with other calculated parameters to characterize the nature of the variability. The VarWISE Pure Catalog, containing only variables of highest confidence, has 457,080 objects, 49.81% of which are new discoveries; the VarWISE Extended Catalog, containing all sources, has 1,918,082 objects, 82.02% of which are new.

Name Intype Units Description
Designation char VarWISE Designation
ra double Right Ascension (J2000)
dec double Declination (J2000)
vartype char Predicted variable type: 'cep', 'rr', 'lpv', 'cv', 'ea', 'ew', 'yso', 'agn', 'sn', or 'unclear'.
confidence double Confidence in the predicted variable type: Runs from 0.0 (less confident) to 1.0 (highly confident). Values of 0.9 or higher are recommended.
variability_snr double Variability signal to noise ratio
period1 double Value of the best-fit period
period2 double Value of the alternate fit period
period_significance double Plavchan-type power of the phase folding for period1
suspect_period int Flag indicating whether the period is likely an alias
W1_amp double Span between the 95th and 5th percentile for the W1 magnitude
W2_amp double Span between the 95th and 5th percentile for the W2 magnitude
n_obs long Number of NEOWISE single-exposure photometric measurements at W1
W1mag double Value of w1mpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
W1emag double Value of w1sigmpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
W2mag double Value of w2mpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
W2emag double Value of w2sigmpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
W3mag double Value of w3mpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
W3emag double Value of w3sigmpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
W4mag double Value of w4mpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
W4emag double Value of w4sigmpro from the AllWISE Source Catalog
Jmag double Value of j_m from the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog
Jemag double Value of j_msigcom from the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog
Hmag double Value of h_m from the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog
Hemag double Value of h_msigcom from the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog
Kmag double Value of k_m from the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog
Kemag double Value of k_msigcom from the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog
Gmag double Value of Gmag from the VizieR version of Gaia DR3
Gemag double Value of e_Gmag from the VizieR version of Gaia DR3
BPmag double Value of BPmag from the VizieR version of Gaia DR3
BPemag double Value of e_BPmag from the VizieR version of Gaia DR3
RPmag double Value of RPmag from the VizieR version of Gaia DR3
RPemag double Value of e_RPmag from the VizieR version of Gaia DR3
Plx double Gaia DR3 measured parallax
e_Plx double Gaia DR3 measured parallax error
simbad_type char SIMBAD variable source type
known_extragalactic int Indicates whether object is in the Gaia QSO/Galaxy catalog
blended_source double Likelihood of spurious variability due to WISE source confusion
latent_artifact double Likelihood of spurious variability due to WISE latent artifacts