The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE; Wright et al. 2010) satellite
observed the full sky in four mid-infrared bands in the 2.8 to 28 micron range. The primary mission was completed in 2010...The WISE team have done a superb job
of producing a series of high-quality, well-documented, complete Data Releases
in a timely manner. However, the "Atlas Image" coadds that are part of the
recent AllWISE and previous data releases were intentionally blurred. Convolving the images by the point-spread function while coadding results in
"matched-filtered" images that are close to optimal for detecting isolated
point sources. But these matched-filtered images are sub-optimal or
inappropriate for other purposes. For example, we are photometering the WISE
images at the locations of sources detected in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(York et al. 2000) through forward modeling, and this blurring decreases the
available signal-to-noise by effectively broadening the point-spread function. This paper presents a new set of coadds of the WISE images that have not been
blurred. These images retain the intrinsic resolution of the data and are
appropriate for photometry preserving the available signal-to-noise. Users
should be cautioned, however, that the W3- and W4-band coadds contain artifacts
around large, bright structures (large galaxies, dusty nebulae, etc);
eliminating these artifacts is the subject of ongoing work. These new coadds,
and the code used to produce them, are publicly available at http://unwise.me .(read more)