VarWISE Associations Table

The VarWISE Catalogs give lists of significantly varying infrared objects discovered within the NEOWISE single-exposure data. Unique methodologies, including the spatial clustering of apparitions and the adoption of novel machine learning-based variable detection (VARnet) and classification (XGBoost), are used to identify and characterize significant variability. The catalogs include a prediction of variable object type, in one of ten different classes (cv, sn, cep, rr, lpv, ea, ew, yso, agn, or unclear, as defined in Paz et al. 2026), and best-fit period values for each object, if its variations are cyclical, along with other calculated parameters to characterize the nature of the variability.

There are two catalogs and an ancillary table. The VarWISE Pure Catalog, containing only variables of highest confidence, has 457,080 objects, 49.81% of which are new discoveries; the VarWISE Extended Catalog, containing all sources, has 1,918,082 objects, 82.02% of which are new. A third product, the VarWISE Associations Table, provides, for every VarWISE object, a link between the cluster_id value listed in the VarWISE catalogs and the individual detection source_id values from the NEOWISE-R Single Exposure (L1b) Source Table, in case users wish to identify the same cloud of data points as those used to create the VarWISE Pure and Extended Catalogs.

This dataset or service is made available by the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) at IPAC, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.