NEOWISE 2016 Data Release Now Available

The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) announce the NEOWISE 2016 data release.

The NEOWISE 2016 data release adds to the public archive all data acquired during the second year of operations of the NEOWISE Reactivation mission (Mainzer et al. 2014, Astrophysical Journal, 792, 30). The combined archive of the first two years of NEOWISE data consists of approximately 5.1 million calibrated 3.4- and 4.6-micron images and a database of over 38.1 billion source detections extracted from those images.

NEOWISE scanned the sky two more times during the second year of surveying, 13 December 2014 and 13 December 2015, bringing the total number of sky coverage epochs to four, with approximately six months between each survey pass. During each survey epoch, 12 or more independent 3.4- and 4.6-micron exposures were made on each point of the sky. Therefore, the NEOWISE data archive is a time-domain resource for extracting multiple, independent thermal flux and position measurements of solar-system small bodies as well as galactic and extragalactic sources.

A guide to the NEOWISE data release, data-access instructions, and supporting documentation is available on the index page. Access to the NEOWISE data products is available via the online and API services of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

NEOWISE is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.