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Description
The Spitzer Archival FIR Extragalactic Survey (SAFIRES) is an offshoot of the Spitzer Space Telescope Enhanced Imaging Products (SEIP). SAFIRES applies the SEIP project's methods to the remaining two MIPS bands, located at far-infrared wavelengths of 70 and 160 microns. Due to the complexity of far-infrared observations, these bands require an expansion of SEIP's standard pipeline through the addition of reprocessing tools. These additional steps are required to remove obvious artifacts before extracting useful measurements. As a result, these bands were not included in the SEIP project, but were later funded through an additional NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP) grant. To ensure high reliability, the SAFIRES sample includes no fields near the Galactic disk; these observations comprised more than half of the area observed by Spitzer, but the practical drawbacks of Galactic contamination would inhibit the ability to maintain the level of reliability desired in the SAFIRES products. As with SEIP, the SAFIRES source lists contains no extended sources. The remaining sample comprises nearly 1132 fields spanning almost 180 square degrees of sky.
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