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In this tutorial, we will tour the WISE image service. WISE is hosted by IRSA. Start at
irsa.ipac.caltech.edu. Navigate to the WISE page, and choose WISE Image Service. Let's
do a simple position search on a single object, Arp 220. Here are the results of our search.
The bottom row shows the WISE images, with wavelength increasing from left to right.
Note that the resolution worsens with increasing wavelength. Each image is 350 by 350 square
arcseconds. Band 4 is binned by a factor of two. The search position is marked with a
blue circle. Expand an image by clicking on the double arrows. The FITS toolbar allows
you to save the image to disk as either a FITS file or a PNG file. You can zoom the
image in, or out. Let's do that again. You can restore the original zoom. This button
restores all defaults. You can change the color table. Let's try the greyscale. And
now, let's restore the default greyscale. Now, let's quickly change the image stretch.
We can also manually set the stretch. The information button gives you some information
from the FITS header. You can alphabetize the keywords for quick searching. This button
overlays an RA/Dec grid on the image. You can select an area for cropping or computing
statistics. Just click and drag to draw a box. I'm not interested in cropping, but I
would like to see the statistics for this region. The top three rows give flux statistics
and the bottom two compute the centroid of the object in the box. You can rotate the
image to any angle, or specifically to north is up. You can calculate the distance between
any two objects. You can mark an object of your choice. Or, center the image if you had
zoomed way in and dragged it off-center. You can inspect the annotations you made. You
can change the color. Or, remove them. Or, just choose not to show one for now. Or, reactivate
ones that had been previously deselected. You can also choose to view all the images
at once. You can select a list of images that you want to see, including the IRAS coverage
image. If you are in the single pane view, you can scroll through the additional images.
The IRAS image can be changed to another background image. Finally, you can collapse this view
to get back to the original search results panel. If you have any questions about the
WISE Atlas images, please contact the IRSA Helpdesk. We also strongly encourage you to
see the WISE explanatory supplement for more details, especially the WISE Image Atlas cautionary
notes.