The WISE AGN Catalog

Abstract

We present two large catalogs of AGN candidates identified across ~75% of the sky from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer's AllWISE Data Release. Both catalogs, some of the largest such catalogs published to date, are selected purely on the basis of mid-IR photometry in the WISE W1 and W2 bands. The catalogs are designed to be appropriate for a broad range of scientific investigations, with one catalog emphasizing reliability while the other emphasizes completeness. Specifically, the R90 catalog consists of 4,543,530 AGN candidates with 90% reliability, while the C75 catalog consists of 20,907,127 AGN candidates with 75% completeness. We provide a detailed discussion of potential artifacts, and excise portions of the sky close to the Galactic Center, Galactic Plane, nearby galaxies, and other expected contaminating sources. Our final catalogs cover 30,093 deg^2 of extragalactic sky. These catalogs are expected to enable a broad range of science, and we present a few simple illustrative cases. From the R90 sample we identify 45 highly variable AGN lacking radio counterparts in the FIRST survey, implying they are unlikely to be blazars. One of these sources, WISEA J142846.71+172353.1, is a mid-IR-identified changing-look quasar at z=0.104. We characterize our catalogs by comparing them to large, wide-area AGN catalogs in the literature, specifically UV-to-near-IR quasar selections from SDSS and XDQSOz, mid-IR selection from Secrest et al. (2015) and X-ray selection from ROSAT. From the latter work, we identify four ROSAT X-ray sources that each are matched to three WISE-selected AGN in the R90 sample within 30". Palomar spectroscopy reveals one of these systems, 2RXS J150158.6+691029, to consist of a triplet of quasars at z=1.133 +/- 0.004, suggestive of a rich group or forming galaxy cluster.(Abridged)