ESASky displays the following default columns from the Hubble Source Catalog:

Note: There is a small positional offset (< 1") between the source coordinates from the HSC and their location on the HST HiPS maps. This is due to the fact that the HST HiPS were generated from HST data products, while the HSC was created from HLA data products, and there is a discrepancy between the astrometric solutions from both samples. An improved sample of HST HiPS will be produced soon.

See the Caveats page for caveats on the HSC.

All-Sky PLATO input catalogue (asPIC1.1)

• Release: 1.1 (September 2021)
• Date of observations: July 2014 to May 2016 (Gaia DR2)
• Source: VizieR (CDS): J/A+A/653/A98/, SSDC asPICtool, Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)

• Reference: Montalto, M. et al. (2021) A&A, 653, 98

The ESA PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission will search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars. Because of telemetry limitations, PLATO targets need to be pre-selected. The all-sky PLATO input catalogue will be fundamental to selecting the best PLATO fields and the most promising target stars, deriving their basic parameters, analysing the instrumental performances, and then planning and optimising follow-up observations. This catalogue also represents a valuable resource for the general definition of stellar samples optimised for the search of transiting planets. 

The first public release of the all sky PLATO Input catalogue (asPIC version 1.1) contains a total of 2,675,539 stars, among which are 2,378,177 FGK dwarfs and subgiants and 297,362 M dwarfs. It was produced using Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) astrometry and photometry and 3D maps of the local interstellar medium. It provides derived reddening of the targets and estimates of stellar fundamental parameters (Teff, radius, mass) from astrometric and photometric measurements using a developed algorithm. For more information, see Montalto, M. et al. (2021) A&A, 653, 98.

ESASky provides access to the following catalogues from the Planck mission: PCCS2, Planck SZ2, PGCC

For a full description of the catalogues, go to this page or to the reference papers cited below.

second PLANCK CATALOGue OF COMPACT SOURCES (PCCS2)

• Release: 2.0 (2015)
• Date of observations: from 13^th August 2009 to 3^rd August 2013
• Source: Planck Legacy Archive
• Reference: Planck-2015-A35

The PCCS2 is a set of single-frequency source catalogues extracted from the Planck full-mission maps in intensity and polarization. These maps contain 48 months of data for the LFI channels, and 29 months of data for the HFI channels,  therefore the flux densities derived from these maps are an average of the source emission over these two periods of time. For the channels 30-353 GHz, the catalogues also contain polarization flux densities and polarization angles for sources with a significance in polarization >99.99%.

The catalogue at 100 Ghz and above has been divided into two subcatalogues: the PCCS2, including all reliable detections (>80%), and PCCS2E, including sources located in sky regions where it was not possible to estimate their reliability.

The following table summarises the columns from the catalogues displayed in ESASky:

SECOND planck sunyaev-zeldovitch catalogue (Psz2)

• Release: 2.0 (2015)
• Date of observations: from 13^th August 2009 to 3^rd August 2013
• Source: Planck Legacy Archive
• Reference: Planck-2015-A36

The Planck SZ catalogue is a nearly all-sky list of SZ detections obtained from the Planck data, derived from the HFI frequency channel maps after masking and filling the bright point sources (SNR>10) from the PCCS catalogues in those channels. It contains 1653 detection, of which 1203 are confirmed clusters with identified counterparts in external datasets.

The catalogue was constructed using three detection pipelines: two implementations of the matched multi-filter algorithm (MMF1 and MMF2) and a Bayesian algorithm called PowellSnakes (PwS). A union catalogue was constructed from the detections of all three pipelines. To avoid spurious detections due to foreground sources, a mask to remove Galactic dust, nearby galaxies and point sources was applied after the merging, leaving 83.7% of the sky.

The union catalogue contains the coordinates of a detection, its signal-to-noise ratio, an estimate of the total integrated Comptomization parameter Y and its uncertainty, as well as information on the generation and validation. If available, external identification of a cluster and its redshift is also provided. When more than one pipeline makes the same detection, the information is taken from the most significant detection. If the redshift is known, the SZ mass from the reference pipeline is provided.

The table below shows the columns from this catalogue displayed in ESASky:

planck catalogUE of galactic cold clumps (PGCC)

• Release: 2.0 (2015)
• Date of observations: from 13^th August 2009 to 3^rd August 2013
• Source: Planck Legacy Archive
• Reference: Planck-2015-A37

The PGCC containes 13,188 Galactic sources and 54 sources located in the Magellanic Clouds, all of them identified as cold sources in Planck data (sources colder than their environment). The sources are extracted from the Planck HFI 857, 545 and 353 GHz maps and the 3 THz IRIS map. A detection requires SNR > 4 in pixels in all Planck bands and a minimum angular distance of 5 arcmin to other detections.

The derived physical properties of the PGCC sources are: temperature, column density, physical size, mass, density, and luminosity. The sources span a temperature range from 5.8 to 20 K, and a variety of physical properties corresponding to many different types of objects, from dense cold cores to large molecular clouds.

These are the columns from the PGCC catalogue displayed in ESASky:

CATALOGUES FROM OTHER DATA PROVIDERS

2WHSP: A multi-frequency selected catalogue of high energy and very high energy gamma-ray blazars and blazar candidates

• Release: 2.0 (2017)
• Reference: Chang, D., et al., 2017, A&A, 598, 17

A multi-frequency selected catalogue of high energy and very high energy gamma-ray blazars and blazar candidates (2WHSP). This catalogue contains the largest and most complete list of High Synchrotron Peaked blazars (HSPs) available to date (in 2017), which is an expansion of the 1WHSP catalog of gamma-ray source candidates off the Galactic plane. A number of multi-wavelength surveys (in the radio, infrared and X-ray bands) have been cross-matched and applied selection criteria based on the radio to IR and IR to X-ray spectral slopes.

This table comprises the 2WHSP catalog, a multi-frequency catalog of HSP. It contains 1691 sources, 288 of which are newly identified HSPs, 540 are previously known HSPs, 814 are HSP candidates, 45 are HSP blazars taken from the 2FHL catalog, and 4 from TeVCat (http://tevcat.uchicago.edu).

Additional information can be found here.

Akari IRC Point Source Catalogue

• Release: 1.0 (2010)
• Date of observations: from May 2006 to August 2007
• Source: ISAS JAXA
• Reference: Ishihara, D., et al., 2010, A&A, 514, A1

The AKARI IRC Point Source Catalogue Version 1.0 provides positions and fluxes of 870,973 sources (844,649 sources in 9 micron band and 194,551 sources in 18 micron band) in the Mid-Infrared wavelengths.

The IRC scanned 96 / 97 percent of the entire sky in 9 / 18 micron band twice or more during the 16 months of the cryogenic mission phase. The Point Source Catalogue is the primary catalogue from the AKARI IRC survey. The catalogue is designed to have a uniform detection limit over the entire sky, based on the uniform source detection limit per scan observation. Redundant observations are used to increase the reliability of the detection.

The AKARI IRC Release Note documentation can be found here.

AllWISE SOURCE catalog

• Release: 1.0 (2013)
• Date of observations: from 2010  to 2011
• Source: Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)
• Reference: Wright et al. 2010, Mainzer et al. 2011

The AllWISE Source Catalog provides astrometry and mid-infrared photometry in four bands (3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 microns) for 747,634,026 objects detected on the deep AllWISE Atlas Intensity Images. It improves the photometry of discrete sources in all four bands with respect to the WISE Catalog. In addition, improved source variability metrics have been computed. Astrometry has also been improved thanks to the correction of the proper motion of the reference 2MASS stars for the 11 years between the two surveys.

The table below shows the columns of the AllWISE catalogue displayed by default in ESASky (more columns can be displayed via the settings button):

Refer to this page for more information on the WISE survey and this catalog.

 CHANDRA SOURCE CATALOG (CSC2)

• Release: 2.0 (2019)
• Date of observations: from 1999 to 2014
• Source: Chandra X-Ray Center (CXC)
• Reference: Evans et al. 2010, ApJS 189, 37

The Chandra Source Catalog (CSC) is the definitive catalog of X-ray sources detected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. By combining Chandra's sub-arcsecond on-axis spatial resolution and low instrumental background with consistent data processing, the CSC delivers a wide variety of uniformly calibrated properties and science ready data products for detected sources over four decades of flux. The second major release of the catalog, CSC 2.0, includes measured properties for 317,167 unique compact and extended X-ray sources in the sky, allowing statistical analysis of large samples, as well as individual source studies. Extracted properties are provided for 928,280 individual observation detections identified in 10,382 Chandra ACIS and HRC-I imaging observations released publicly through the end of 2014. CSC 2.0 includes—as an "alpha" release—photometric properties for 1,299 highly extended (≳30″) sources, together with surface brightness polygons for several contour levels. All can be retrieved, together with the full list of parameters available in the full catalog for each source, using CSCview. Go here for more information on the CSC.

eROSITA CATALOGUES

The following catalogues from eROSITA are included in ESASky: eRASS1 main, eRASS1 hard, eFEDS main, eFEDS hard, etaCha main, etaCha hard.

eRASS1 main catalogue

• Release: DR1 (2024)
• Date of observations: From 12 December 2019 to 11 June 2020
• Source: eROSITA eRASS1 source catalogues

• Reference: Merloni, A., et al. (2024) A&A, 682, A34

The eROSITA X-ray telescope on board the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SPG) observatory combines a large field of view and a large collecting area in the energy range between ~0.2 and ~8.0 keV. This gives the telescope the capability to perform uniform scanning observations of large sky areas. The eRASS1 main catalogue consits of data acquired in the first six months of survey operations (eRASS1; completed June 2020) over the half sky whose proprietary data rights lie with the German eROSITA Consortium and contains X-ray sources detected in the 0.2-2.3 keV band using eSASS adopting a detection likelihood threshold of 5. The sources with detection likelihood larger than 6 are selected as the main eRASS1 catalogue (930203 sources). 

The eRASS1 main catalogue increases the number of known X-ray sources in the published literature by more than 60%, and provides a comprehensive inventory of all classes of X-ray celestial objects, covering a wide range of physical processes. For more information see Merloni et al. 2024.

eRASS1 Hard catalogue

• Release: DR1 (2024)
• Date of observations: From 12 December 2019 to 11 June 2020
• Source: eROSITA eRASS1 source catalogues

• Reference: Merloni, A., et al. (2024) A&A, 682, A34

The eROSITA X-ray telescope on board the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SPG) observatory combines a large field of view and a large collecting area in the energy range between ~0.2 and ~8.0 keV. This gives the telescope the capability to perform uniform scanning observations of large sky areas. The eRASS1 hard catalogue consits of data acquired in the first six months of survey operations (eRASS1; completed June 2020) over the half sky whose proprietary data rights lie with the German eROSITA Consortium and contains X-ray sources detected in the 2.3-5.0 keV band (5466 sources). This eRASS1 hard catalogue is the result of the first true imaging survey of the entire sky above 2 keV. For more information see Merloni et al. 2024.

eFEDS main catalogue

• Release: EDR (2021)
• Date of observations: 3-7 November 2019
• Source: eROSITA EDR catalogues

• Reference: Brunner et al. 2022, A&A, 661, 1

The eROSITA X-ray telescope on board the Spectrum-Poentgen-Gamma (SPG) observatory combines a large field of view and a large collecting area in the energy range between ~0.2 and ~8.0 keV. This gives the telescope the capability to perform uniform scanning observations of large sky areas. SRG/eROSITA performed scanning observations of the ~140 square degree eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey field (the eFEDS field) as part of its performance verification phase ahead of the planned four year of all-sky scanning operations. The observing time of eFEDS was chosen to slightly exceed the depth expected in an equatorial field after the completion of the all^-sky survey. While verifying the capability of eROSITA to perform large-area uniform surveys and saving as a test and training dataset to establish calibration and data analysis procedures, the eFEDS survey also constitutes the largest contiguous soft X-ray survey at this depth to date, supporting a range of early eROSITA survey science investigations. 

The eFEDS main catalogue contains X-ray sources detected in the 0.2-2.3 keV band using eSASS adopting a detection likelihood threshold of 5. The sources with detection likelihood larger than 6 are selected as the main eFEDS catalog (27910 sources). For more information see Brunner et al. 2022.

eFEDS hard catalogue

• Release: EDR (2021)
• Date of observations: 3-7 November 2019
• Source: eROSITA EDR catalogues

• Reference: Brunner et al. 2022, A&A, 661, 1

The eROSITA X-ray telescope on board the Spectrum-Poentgen-Gamma (SPG) observatory combines a large field of view and a large collecting area in the energy range between ~0.2 and ~8.0 keV. This gives the telescope the capability to perform uniform scanning observations of large sky areas. SRG/eROSITA performed scanning observations of the ~140 square degree eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey field (the eFEDS field) as part of its performance verification phase ahead of the planned four year of all-sky scanning operations. The observing time of eFEDS was chosen to slightly exceed the depth expected in an equatorial field after the completion of the all^-sky survey. While verifying the capability of eROSITA to perform large-area uniform surveys and saving as a test and training dataset to establish calibration and data analysis procedures, the eFEDS survey also constitutes the largest contiguous soft X-ray survey at this depth to date, supporting a range of early eROSITA survey science investigations. 

The Hard X-ray selected eFEDS catalogue contains sources detected in three bands (1: 0.2-0.6; 2: 0.6-2.3; 3: 2.3-5 keV) using eSASS adopting a detection likelihood threshold of 5. The sources with a 2.3-5 keV band detection likelihood greater than 10 and a zero extent likelihood were selected as the hard eFEDS catalogue (246 sources). For more information see Brunner et al. 2022.

eta Chamaeleontis main catalogue

• Release: EDR (2021)
• Date of observations: 16-18 November 2019
• Source: eROSITA EDR catalogues

• Reference: Robrade et al. 2022, A&A, 661, 34

The eta Cha main catalogue is a catalogue of X-ray sources in the eta Chamaeleontis field scan observation (OBSID 300004). The nearby young open cluster eta Chamaeleontis was observed by eROSITA/SRG during its CalPV phase for 150 ks. The eROSITA data were taken in the field-scan mode, an observing mode of Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) that follows a rectangular grid-like pattern, here covering a 5x5 deg field with an exposure depth of about 5 ks. The known members were studied in X-rays and potential new members of the anticipated dispersed low-mass cluster population were searched for. For more information see Robrade et al. (2022).

eta Chamaeleontis hard catalogue

• Release: EDR (2021)
• Date of observations: 16-18 November 2019
• Source: eROSITA EDR catalogues

• Reference: Robrade et al. 2022, A&A, 661, 34

The eta Cha hard catalogue is a catalogue of hard X-ray sources in the eta Chamaeleontis field scan observation (OBSID 300004). The nearby young open cluster eta Chamaeleontis was observed by eROSITA/SRG during its CalPV phase for 150 ks. The eROSITA data were taken in the field-scan mode, an observing mode of Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) that follows a rectangular grid-like pattern, here covering a 5x5 deg field with an exposure depth of about 5 ks. The known members were studied in X-rays and potential new members of the anticipated dispersed low-mass cluster population were searched for. For more information see Robrade et al. (2022).

FERMI CATALOGUES

The following catalogues from the Fermi mission are included in ESASky: 4FGL-DR2, 3FHL, 4LAC-DR2.

fermi large area telescope FOURTH SOURCE CATALOG - DATA RELEASE 2 (4FGL-DR2)

• Release: 4FGL-DR2 (2020)
• Date of observations: From 4 August 2008 to 2 August 2018
• Source: Fermi-LAT webpage

• Reference: Abdollahi et al. 2020, Ballet et al. 2020

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope  was launched in June 2008 and surveys the entire sky every day. The Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog (4FGL-DR2) presents 5,064 sources in the 50 MeV-1 TeV energy range. For more information go to the paper above or visit the Fermi-LAT webpage.

THIRD FERMI-LAT CATALOG OF HIGH-ENERGY SOURCES (3FHL)

• Release: 3FHL (2017)
• Date of observations: 2008 to 2015
• Source: Fermi-LAT webpage

• Reference: Fermi-LAT collaboration 2017

The Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources (3FHL) reports the locations and spectra of sources significantly detected in the 10 GeV – 2 TeV energy range during the first 7 years of the Fermi mission using the Pass 8 event-level analysis. It contains 1556 objects characterized in the 10 GeV - 2 TeV energy range. For more information go to the paper above or visit the Fermi-LAT webpage.

Fourth Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei detected by the LAT - data release 2 (4lac-dr2)

• Release: 4LAC-DR2 (2020)
• Date of observations: From 4 August 2008 to 2 August 2018
• Source: Fermi-LAT webpage

• Reference: Ajello et al. 2020, Lott et al. 2020

The fourth catalog of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Large Area Telescope (4LAC) contains 2863 objects located at high Galactic latitudes derived from the 4FGL catalog.

GLADE+ Galaxy Catalog

• Release: GLADE+ (2022)
• Date of observations: from  ###24 October 2011 to 27 May 2020
• Source: GLADE+
• Reference: Dálya et al. (2022) MNRAS, 514, 1403

GLADE+ is an extended version of the GLADE galaxy catalog for multimessenger searches with advanced gravitational-wave detectors. GLADE+ combines data from six separate but not independent astronomical catalogues: the GWGC, 2MPZ, 2MASS XSC, HyperLEDA, and WISExSCOSPZ galaxy catalogues, and the SDSS-DR16Q quasar catalogue. GLADE+ contains ~22.5 million galaxies and ~750,000 quasars. GLADE+ is complete up to a luminosity distance of ~44 Mpc in terms of the cumulative B-band luminosity of galaxies, and contains all of the brightest galaxies giving half of the total B-band luminosity up to ~95 Mpc. Considering the brightest galaxies giving half of the total luminosity in the W1-band, GLADE+ has nearly 90% completeness at even ~500 Mpc. Stellar masses and binary neutron star mergers for galaxies with W1 magnitudes have been derived. These parameters can help to rank the galaxies in a given gravitational wave localization volume, thereby possibly reducing the number of pointings and the total integration time needed to find the electromagnetic counterpart. The codes used for the stellar mass and and merger rate calculations can be found on Github. For more information see Dálya et al. (2022) and the GLADE+ website.

IceCube All-Sky Point-Source Events Catalog (2008 - 2018)

• Release: 1.0 (2021)
• Date of observations: from 2008 to 2018
• Source: IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• Reference: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09836 and IceCube collaboration 2020

IceCube has performed several searches for point-like sources of neutrinos. The events contained in the IceCube All-Sky Point-Source Events Catalog (2008 - 2018; Icecubepsc) make up the sample used in IceCube's 10-year time-integrated neutrino point source search. Events in the sample are track-like neutrino candidates detected by IceCube between April 2008 and July 2018.

IMPORTANT NOTE: ESASky displays fewer events than those available in the IceCube All-Sky Point-Source Events Catalog in order to show a less crowded display. An energy cut has been applied to the data to remove most of the lower energy events, therefore, ESASky display events with energies of E>10⁴ GeV in the Northern hemisphere and events with energies of E>10^5.8 GeV in the Southern hemisphere (approximately the top 1% events in energy; 26706 neutrino candidate events). See the below figure from the Icecube Collaboration (2021) publication (https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09836) showing the distribution of events as a function of reconstructed declination and event energy:

For more information on the IceCube All-Sky Point-Source Events Catalog and to download the whole catalog (1.1 million events) please go to this page.

The table below shows the columns of the IceCube All-Sky Point-Source Events Catalog displayed by default in ESASky (more columns can be displayed via the settings button):

LAMOST GENERAL catalogs (LAMOST DR9)

• Release: 9.0 (2023)
• Date of observations: from 24 October 2011 to 30 June 2021
• Source: LAMOST
• Reference: LAMOST DR9 Release Note

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) is a Chinese national scientific research facility operated by the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is a special reflecting Schmidt telescope with 4000 fibers in a field of view of 20 degrees. The LAMOST survey, initiated in 2012, provides flux - and wavelength-calibrated, sky-subtracted spectra in the wavelength range of 3700-9000 angstroms with a resolution of 1800 at 5500 angstroms for many types of astronomical objects. Since October 2018, LAMOST started the second stage survey program containing both low- and medium-resolution spectroscopic surveys, and the medium-resolution spectroscopic survey includes two surveys, i.e., the time-domain and the non time-domain surveys.

The ninth LAMOST data release (LAMOST DR9) includes observations until June 2021. The Low-Resolution spectroscopic survey (LRS) General Catalog contains 11,211,028 spectra, of which 10,893,354 are stars, 241,454 are galaxies, and 76,220 are QSOs. The Medium-Resolution spectroscopic survey (MRS) General Catalog contains 8,259,362 spectra, where there are 1,846,438 and 6,412,924 spectra for the non time-domain and time-domain surveys, respectively. 

The following columns have been included in ESASky:

In addition to the LRS and MRS General Catalogs, LAMOST DR9 provides many other catalogs, including stellar parameter catalogs, the Observed Plate Information Catalog, the Input Catalog and others. For now, these catalogs have not been integrated in ESASky. Refer to the LRS and MRS data product description pages for more information on this data release.

open universe for blazars V2.0

• Release: 2.0 (2019)
• Reference: Chang, Y. L. et al., 2020, A&C, 3000, 350, Giommi, P.  et al., 2019, A&A, 631, 116

Open Universe for Blazars relies on a master list of blazars. The second version of this list was assembled by combining the 5BZCAT, the 3HSP, and the Fermi 4LAC catalogue.

For more information visit the Open Universe for Blazars webpage.

Swift-XRT Point Source Catalog (2SXPS)

• Release: 2.0 (2020)
• Reference: Evans et al., 2020 ApJS, 247,54

The Second Swift-XRT Point Source (2SXPS) catalog contains 206,335 point sources detected by the Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT) in the 0.3-10 keV energy range. This catalog represents a significant improvement over 1SXPS, with double the sky coverage (now 3790 deg²), and several significant developments in source detection and classification. In particular, modeling the effect of stray light and significantly reducing the number of spurious sources detected. Plus, a new model of the XRT point-spread function and a method for correctly localizing and characterizing piled-up sources.

For more information visit the Leicester 2SXPS documentation and the HEASARC 2SXPS webpage.

The second ROSAT all-sky survey source catalogue (2RXS)

• Release: 2.0 (2016)
• Date of observations: from June 1990 to August 1991
• Source: Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
• Reference: Boller et al. 2016

The second ROSAT all-sky survey source catalogue (2RXS) is the second publicly released ROSAT catalogue of point-like sources obtained from the ROSAT all-sky survey (RASS) observations performed with the position-sensitive proportional counter (PSPC) between June 1990 and August 1991, and is an extended and revised version of the bright and faint source catalogues. Utilizing the latest RASS processing, this catalog includes more than 135,000 X-ray detections in the 0.1-2.4 keV energy band down to a likelihood threshold of 6.5.

Additional information can be found here.

TWO-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) catalog of point sources

• Release: All-sky (2003)
• Date of observations: from 1997 to 2001
• Source: Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)
• Reference: Cutri et al. 2003

The Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) covered 99.998% of the sky in three near-infrared bands, J, H and Ks. The 2MASS Point Source Catalog (PSC) contains positional and photometric information for 470,992,970 point sources. Sources in this catalogue are detected in at least one band with S/N higher than 7, or in all three bands with S/N higher than 5. In addition, the source position must fulfil some conditions to ensure it is not a spurious detection or there is confusion between sources.

The table below shows the columns of the 2MASS catalogue displayed in ESASky (more columns can be displayed via the settings button):

See the IPAC 2MASS documentation for more details on this catalogue.