Time-resolved WISE/NEOWISE Coadds

TL;DR

This paper presents a new set of time-resolved coadds from WISE/NEOWISE data, enabling long-term infrared variability studies and motion detection of faint objects like cold brown dwarfs over a 5.5-year span.

Contribution

The authors created a comprehensive, multi-epoch, full-sky infrared coadd dataset from WISE/NEOWISE observations, enhancing motion detection capabilities for faint objects.

Findings

Generated six epochal coadds per band for most sky regions.

Extended the time baseline for motion measurements by over ten times.

Enabled detection of objects 1.3 magnitudes fainter than single-exposure limits.

Abstract

We have used the first ~3 years of 3.4 micron (W1) and 4.6 micron (W2) observations from the WISE and NEOWISE missions to create a full-sky set of time-resolved coadds. As a result of the WISE survey strategy, a typical sky location is visited every six months and is observed during 12 or more exposures per visit, with these exposures spanning a ~1 day time interval. We have stacked the exposures within such ~1 day intervals to produce one coadd per band per visit -- that is, one coadd every six months at a given position on the sky in each of W1 and W2. For most parts of the sky we have generated six epochal coadds per band, with one visit during the fully cryogenic WISE mission, one visit during NEOWISE, and then, after a 33 month gap, four more visits during the NEOWISE-Reactivation mission phase. These coadds are suitable for studying long-timescale mid-infrared variability and measuring motions to ~1.3 magnitudes fainter than the single-exposure detection limit. In most sky regions, our coadds span a 5.5 year time period and therefore provide a >10x enhancement in time baseline relative to that available for the AllWISE catalog's apparent motion measurements. As such, the signature application of these new coadds is expected to be motion-based identification of relatively faint brown dwarfs, especially those cold enough to remain undetected by Gaia.