WISE 3-Band Cryo L1b Images

This phase covers the time following the exhaustion of solid hydrogen in the WISE payload outer cryogen tank, while the detectors and telescope were still cooled by the inner cryogen tank. During this time, WISE's W1, W2 and W3 bands were operational and continued to acquire useful data, but the W4 detector was saturated by thermal emission from the warming telescope.

The sensitivity achieved in the W1 and W2 bands was similar to that during the full cryogenic mission phase. The W3 measurement sensitivity was degraded and decreased steadily during the 3-Band Cryo phase because of the increasing telescope temperature and decreasing exposure times. The WISE 3-Band Cryo Release Single-Exposure images consist of 392,879 photometrically and astrometrically calibrated 1016x1016 pix at 2.75"/pix FITS image sets for each individual WISE exposure taken between 6 August and 29 September 2010.