Vela-Carina is the fourth in a series of large area projects to map selected regions of the Galactic plane using the Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). The Vela-Carina project (PID=40791) (Majewski et al. 2007, Zasowski et al. 2009) extended GLIMPSE-style coverage (two 1.2 second integrations at each position) to Galactic longitudes 255◦< l < 295◦ covering 86 square degrees of the Carina and Vela regions of the Galactic plane.
The Vela-Carina Archive (VelaCarA or the “Archive”), consists of point sources with a signal- to-noise > 5 in at least one band and less stringent selection critera than the Catalog. The photometric uncertainty is typically < 0.3 mag. The information provided is in the same format as the Catalog. The Catalog is a subset of the Archive, but note that the entries for a particular source might not be the same due to additional nulling of magnitudes in the Catalog because of the more stringent requirements.
Vela-Carina is the fourth in a series of large area projects to map selected regions of the Galactic plane using the Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). The Vela-Carina project (PID=40791) (Majewski et al. 2007, Zasowski et al. 2009) extended GLIMPSE-style coverage (two 1.2 second integrations at each position) to Galactic longitudes 255◦< l < 295◦ covering 86 square degrees of the Carina and Vela regions of the Galactic plane.
The Vela-Carina Catalog (VelaCarC, or the “Catalog”), consists of the highest reliability point sources. To be in the Catalog, sources must be detected at least twice in one IRAC band and at least once in an adjacent band, which we call a “2+1” criterion, where the “1” can include the 2MASS Ks band. This yields a Vela-Carina Catalog with a reliability greater than 99.5%; that is, only five sources in a thousand are expected to be spurious. For each IRAC band the Catalog provides fluxes (with uncertainties), positions (with uncer- tainties), the areal density of local point sources, the local sky brightness, and a flag that provides information on source quality and known anomalies present in the data.
