English

SOFIA/FORCAST Galactic Center Source Catalog

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2024-07-12 v1

Abstract

The central regions of the Milky Way constitute a unique laboratory for a wide swath of astrophysical studies, consequently the inner \sim400 pc has been the target of numerous large surveys at all accessible wavelengths. In this paper we present a catalog of sources at 25 and 37 μ\mum located within all of the regions observed with the SOFIA/FORCAST instrument in the inner \sim200 pc of the Galaxy. The majority of the observations were obtained as part of the SOFIA Cycle 7 Galactic Center Legacy program survey, which was designed to complement the Spitzer/MIPS 24 μ\mum catalog in regions saturated in the MIPS observations. Due to the wide variety of source types captured by our observations at 25 and 37 μ\mum, we do not limit the FORCAST source catalog to unresolved point sources, or treat all sources as if they are point-like sources. The catalog includes all detectable sources in the regions, resulting in a catalog of 950 sources, including point sources, compact sources, and extended sources. We also provide the user with metrics to discriminate between the source types.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.08054,
  title  = {SOFIA/FORCAST Galactic Center Source Catalog},
  author = {Angela S. Cotera and Matthew J. Hankins and John Bally and Ashley T. Barnes and Cara D. Battersby and H Perry Hatchfield and Terry L. Herter and Ryan M. Lau and Steven N. Longmore and Elisabeth A. C. Mills and Mark R. Morris and James T. Radomski and Janet P. Simpson and Zachary Stephens and Daniel L. Walker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.08054},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

29 pages, 13 figures, Accepted to ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:36:31.226Z