Second Data Release of the All-sky NOIRLab Source Catalog

• Published in: The Astronomical journal 2021-04, Vol.161 (4), p.192
• Main Authors: Nidever, David L., Dey, Arjun, Fasbender, Katie, Juneau, Stéphanie, Meisner, Aaron M., Wishart, Joseph, Scott, Adam, Matt, Kyle, Nikutta, Robert, Pucha, Ragadeepika
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Algorithms; Astrometry; Astronomy; Broadband; Dwarf galaxies; Extinction; Galaxies; Mathematical analysis; Outliers (statistics); Photometry; Quasars; Solar system; Variable stars
• ISSN: 0004-6256; 1538-3881
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/abd6e1

We announce the second data release (DR2) of the NOIRLab Source Catalog (NSC), using 412,116 public images from CTIO-4 m+DECam, the KPNO-4 m+Mosaic3, and the Bok-2.3 m+90Prime. NSC DR2 contains over 3.9 billion unique objects, 68 billion individual source measurements, covers ≈35,000 square degrees of the sky, has depths of ≈23 mag in most broadband filters with ≈1%–2% photometric precision, and astrometric accuracy of ≈7 mas. Approximately 1.9 billion objects within ≈30,000 square degrees of sky have photometry in three or more bands. There are several improvements over NSC DR1. DR2 includes 156,662 (61%) more exposures extending over 2 more years than in DR1. The southern photometric zero-points in griz are more accurate by using the Skymapper DR1 and ATLAS-Ref2 catalogs, and improved extinction corrections were used for high-extinction regions. In addition, the astrometric accuracy is improved by taking advantage of Gaia DR2 proper motions when calibrating the astrometry of individual images. This improves the NSC proper motions to ∼2.5 mas yr −1 (precision) and ∼0.2 mas yr −1 (accuracy). The combination of sources into unique objects is performed using a DBSCAN algorithm and mean parameters per object (such as mean magnitudes, proper motion, etc.) are calculated more robustly with outlier rejection. Finally, eight multi-band photometric variability indices are calculated for each object and variable objects are flagged (23 million objects). NSC DR2 will be useful for exploring solar system objects, stellar streams, dwarf satellite galaxies, quasi-stellar objects, variable stars, high proper-motion stars, and transients. Several examples of these science use cases are presented. The NSC DR2 catalog is publicly available via the NOIRLab’s Astro Data Lab science platform.