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WISE Catalog of Galactic HII Regions v2.2

Metadata Updated: April 10, 2026

The WISE Catalog of Galactic HII Regions consists of 8000 Galactic HII regions and HII region candidates selected by searching for their characteristic mid-infrared (MIR) morphology. WISE has sufficient sensitivity to detect the MIR emission from HII regions located anywhere in the Galactic disk. This is the most complete catalog yet of regions forming massive stars in the Milky Way. Of the ~8000 cataloged sources, ~1500 have measured radio recombination line (RRL) or Halpha emission, and are thus known to be HII regions. This sample improves on previous efforts by resolving HII region complexes into multiple sources and by removing duplicate entries. There are ~2500 candidate HII regions in the catalog that are spatially coincident with radio continuum emission. Previous RRL studies show that ~95% of such targets are HII regions. Approximately 500 of these candidates are also positionally associated with known HII region complexes, so the probability of their being bona fide HII regions is even higher. At the sensitivity limits of existing surveys, ~4000 catalog sources show no radio continuum emission. Distances for ~1500 catalog sources and molecular velocities for ~1500 HII region candidates are taken from the literature.

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 April 10, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026
Publisher NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://irsa.ipac/wise/catalog/galhii
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
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 0757948c-b7fe-444f-97d7-2abd3052c5ab
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL ivo://irsa.ipac/wise/catalog/galhii
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8b93f540f2d9a232b6812a16af9d7c6569ffc3bfff9307da5ea6684b48d309bd
Source Schema Version 1.1

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