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Fermi LAT 4-Year Point Source Catalog

Metadata Updated: March 13, 2026

The Fermi LAT 4-Year Point Source Catalog (3FGL) is a catalog of high-energy gamma-ray sources detected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) mission during the first 48 months of the science phase of the mission, which began on 2008 August 4. Compared to the 2FGL catalog, the 3FGL catalog incorporates twice as much data as well as a number of analysis improvements, including improved calibrations at the event reconstruction level, an updated model for Galactic diffuse gamma-ray emission, a refined procedure for source detection, and improved methods for associating LAT sources with potential counterparts at other wavelengths. Sources were detected and characterized in the 100 MeV to 300 GeV range. Source detection was based on a threshold likelihood Test Statistic of 25, corresponding to a significance of just over 4 sigma. This catalog includes source location regions, defined in terms of elliptical fits to the 95% confidence regions and spectral fits with three different spectral forms; power-law for most sources, log-parabola for significantly curved sources, and power-law with exponential cutoff for known gamma-ray pulsars. It also includes flux measurements in 5 bands for each source. The Fermi LAT Team has evaluated the populations of gamma-ray sources that are represented in the catalog using a protocol defined before launch. Individual LAT-detected sources have been provided identifications or plausible associations with sources in other astronomical catalogs. Care was taken to characterize the sensitivity of the results to the model of interstellar diffuse gamma-ray emission used to model the bright foreground, and a number of sources at low Galactic latitudes and toward bright local interstellar clouds are flagged as having positions that are strongly dependent on the model or as potentially entirely due to incorrectly modeled structure in the Galactic diffuse emission. This catalog has been superseded by the <a href="fermilpsc.html">Fermi LAT 8-Year Point Source Catalog</a>, also known as 4FGL. Please refer to that if you want the latest version. This database table was originally ingested by the HEASARC in May, 2015, as FERMILPSC. With the release of the 4FGL catalog in March, 2019, this catalog was renamed FERMI3FGL. The electronic data for this catalog was obtained from the Fermi Science Support Center (FSSC) at <a href="http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/lat/4yr_catalog/">http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/lat/4yr_catalog/</a>;. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/fermi3fgl
Data Last Modified 2026-03-09
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 19efb49b-402b-4854-8562-783958489820
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL ivo://nasa.heasarc/fermi3fgl
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 6d95d98e7ad4a0b8d01a46009dacb1e500b8f4e3d6d2efdb2724a52af2e774f3
Source Schema Version 1.1

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