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Description
We use 8.3{mu}m mid-infrared images acquired with the Midcourse Space Experiment satellite to identify and catalog infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) in the first and fourth quadrants of the Galactic plane. Because IRDCs are seen as dark extinction features against the diffuse Galactic infrared background, we identify them by first determining a model background from the 8.3{mu}m images and then searching for regions of high decremental contrast with respect to this background. IRDC candidates in our catalog are defined by contiguous regions bounded by closed contours of a 2{sigma} decremental contrast threshold. We identify 10,931 candidate IRDCs. For each IRDC, we also catalog cores. These cores, defined as localized regions with at least 40% higher extinction than the cloud's average extinction, are found by iteratively fitting two-dimensional elliptical Gaussian functions to the contrast peaks. We identify 12,774 cores. The catalog contains the position, angular size, orientation, area, peak contrast, peak contrast signal-to-noise, and integrated contrast of the candidate IRDCs and their cores.
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