Column Descriptions
I. MAIN CATALOG
Column Description
NAME Source name as given in article
RA Right Ascension (1950)
DEC Declination (1950)
LAMBDA Wavelength in microns
FLUX Source flux and associated unit (See FLUX below)
BEAM Aperture size (see BEAM below)
BIBLIO Bibliographic reference code (See BIBLIO below)
PSC NAME Source name in the IRAS Point Source Catalog (PSC)
PSC FLUX Order-of-magnitude PSC flux at 12, 25, 60,
and 100 microns (See IRAS below)
PSC CODE PSC quality codes for each wavelength (See IRAS below)
FLUX (Cols. 45-49)-- The infrared flux is listed in the same units as published by
the original observers. The units have been given one- or two-letter abbreviations (see
UNITS file). To protect the integrity of the database, no attempt has been
made to convert these different units of infrared flux into a more homogeneous
system. Fortunately, about 95% of the flux observations in the Catalog have
units of "magnitudes" or "Janskys," or have commonly used units (B, E, F, I, X).
The remaining 2% of the entries are in less common units, but these are
dimensionally equivalent to one of the more commonly used units. In general,
infrared magnitudes are calibrated with respect to the flux density of Alpha Lyr
(10^4 K blackbody), which is defined as being 0 magnitude at all infrared
wavelengths (see Gillett et al., 1971, Ap.J., 164, 83; Gehrz and Woolf, 1971,
Ap.J., 165, 185).
The following letters may be appended to the flux unit:
V = variable or mean of several values; L = lower limit (detector saturated);
U = upper limit; E = editor determined flux from maps, spectra, or other material in
the article not in tabulated form.
When spectral data (S) are listed, only the starting wavelength of the spectrum
appears in the Lambda(microns) column. Starting and ending wavelengths of
published spectra are given in the spectra.dat file.
BEAM -- The angular beam size of the observation is presented in
degrees (D), arcminutes (M), or arcseconds (S). If no beam size information was
given in the original reference, a dash (-) is entered. In addition to being a
factor in source brightness calculation, the beam size can be used as an aid in
determining positional coincidences and identifications with other sources, and
as a first-order indication of positional accuracy.
BIBLIO (Cols. 52-57)-- The bibliographic reference code identifies the original
journal article for each observation in the Catalog, keyed to the chronological
refchron.dat file. The bibliographic reference number is made up of the
year and month
of publication, and a sequential number is assigned to the article (for example,
"790104" breaks down into 79-01-04, where 79 = 1979, 01 = January, and 04 =
article randomly assigned as #4 in that month). References that do not indicate
the month of publication have "00" in the month field.
IRAS (Cols. 58-68)-- The large number of sources (245,000) in the IRAS Point Source
Catalog (PSC) would clearly overwhelm the CIO. Criteria had to be established to
include IRAS data without changing the basic nature of the Catalog. Order-of-magnitude
IRAS PSC fluxes have been included in the main Catalog files for all CIO sources
which were also detected in the IRAS PSC Version 2.0 (about 27,000 of the
individual sources listed in this edition of the CIO). The four digits used
represent the approximate logarithm of the flux density in each of the four IRAS
bands. For example, "0012" means that the source listed has fluxes of roughly
1, 1, 10, and 100 Janskys in IRAS bands 1, 2, 3, and 4 (12, 25, 60, and 100
microns), respectively. The numbers used in this notation are specifically
0 = < 5 Jy, 1 = 5-50 Jy, 2 = 50-500 Jy, 3 = 500-5000 Jy, etc. Exact values
for the PSC fluxes of CIO sources can be obtained from the PSC files, which list
positions and fluxes from version 2.0 of the Point Source Catalog (see below).
The PSC quality codes are: blank = high; : = moderate; U = upper limit; S = saturated.
II. SOURCE ATLAS
Contents Description
NAME Source name
RA Right Ascension (1950)
DEC Declination (1950)
III. REFERENCES
References are listed alphabetically by first author's name and include journal
name, volume, page, and article title.
To top of page
The following flux unit abbreviations are used by the Catalog of Infrared Observations.
Note: a caret is used to indicate exponents.
Abbreviation Definition No. of Journals
Using Unit
A normalized magnitude 29
B 10^(-19) W m^(-2) Hz^(-1) Sr^(-1) 47
C magnitude, derived from color 558
D diameter measurement 187
E erg sec^(-1) cm^(-2) Sr^(-1) 78
F 10^(-16) W cm^(-2) micron^(-1) 134
G 10^(-14) ergs sec^(-1) cm^(-2) 186
H log(ergs sec^(-1) cm^(-2) Hz^(-1)) 14
I 10^(-9) W cm^(-2) micron^(-1) Sr^(-1) 16
J 10^(-26) W m^(-2) Hz^(-1) = 1 Jansky 1185
JA Janskys arcsec^(-2) 2
K log(10^(-26) W m^(-2) Hz^(-1)) 20
L log(W m^(-2) Hz^(-1)) 12
M magnitude 2572
MA magnitudes arcsec^(-2) 52
N log(ergs sec^(-1) cm^(-2) micron^(-1)) 6
P polarization data 308
Q log(10^(-3) Jansky) 6
R log(W cm^(-2) micron^(-1)) 8
S spectral data 1809
T -2.5 log(ergs sec^(-1) cm^(-2) Hz^(-1)) - 48.60 9
U upper limit
V variable
W 10^(-14) W m^(-2) 179
X 10^(-18) W cm^(-2) 229
Y relative line intensity 50
Z 10^(-21) W cm^(-2) micron^(-1) arcsec^(-2) 5
What Is the CIO?![[!]](warning.gif)
CAUTION ![[Home]](RedButtonLeftArrow.gif)
CIO Home Page