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MassiveYoungStar-FormingComplexStudyinIR&X-Rays:Mid-IRSourceCatalogs

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

Spitzer IRAC observations and stellar photometric catalogs are presented for the Massive Young star-forming complex Study in the Infrared and X-ray (MYStIX). MYStIX is a multi-wavelength census of young stellar members of 20 nearby (distances < 4 kpc), Galactic, star-forming regions (SFRs) that contain at least one O-type star. All regions have data available from the Spitzer Space Telescope consisting of GLIMPSE or other published catalogs for 11 regions and results of the authors' own photometric analysis of archival data for the remaining 9 regions. The authors also reduced the GLIMPSE data for the W 3 SFR using the aperture photometry method in order to compare the results obtained using the two methods (see Section 3.4.2 of the reference paper). The reference paper seeks to construct deep and reliable catalogs of sources from the Spitzer images. Mid-infrared study of these regions faces challenges of crowding and high nebulosity. These new catalogs typically contain fainter sources than existing Spitzer studies, which improves the match rate to Chandra X-ray sources that are likely to be young stars, but increases the possibility of spurious point-source detections, especially peaks in the nebulosity. IRAC color-color diagrams help distinguish spurious detections of nebular polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission from the infrared excess associated with dusty disks around young stars. The distributions of sources on the mid-infrared color-magnitude and color-color diagrams reflect differences between MYStIX regions, including astrophysical effects such as stellar ages and disk evolution. The GLIMPSE (Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire) Survey is a Legacy Science Program of the Spitzer Space Telescope to study star formation in the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy. It contains six MYStIX regions - the Lagoon Nebula, the Trifid Nebula, NGC 6334, the Eagle Nebula, M 17, and NGC 6357 - within the 2-degree wide strip along the Galactic equator (GLIMPSE I and II data releases). Furthermore, Spitzer images and photometry for RCW 38 and NGC 3576 come from the Vela-Carina survey (Majewski et al. 2007, Spitzer Proposal 40791), using a similar observing strategy with mosaicking and photometric analysis as performed with the GLIMPSE pipeline. The authors obtained publicly available raw IRAC images from the Spitzer Heritage Archive for nine MYStIX regions without GLIMPSE coverage. The target list and details of the Astronomical Observation Requests (AORs) are provided in Table 1 of the reference paper. The camera spatial resolutions are FWHM = 1.6" to 1.9" from 3.6 to 8.0um. This table contains the combined IRAC source lists from the GLIMPSE photometry of W 3 and the aperture photometry of the 9 SFRs listed in Table 4, part 1 of the reference paper. This table was created by the HEASARC in February 2014 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/ApJS/209/29">CDS Catalog J/ApJS/209/29</a> files table2.dat and table3.dat. To distinguish from which table a source originated, the HEASARC has added a parameter called table_number listing the number of the source table, 2 or 3. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/mystixmidi
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
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 58e38af6-69a5-4962-ac0c-1e612c37651d
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/mystixmidi.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash ee6bbb72da482e48e4432a732a09552b8976b2f4400e38061414146013521487
Source Schema Version 1.1

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