Dear Herschel colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the public release of the Herschel/PACS Point Source Catalogue (HPPSC), containing close to half million entries spread between the three PACS bands.

The distribution of the detected sources in the sky and other top-level information about this catalogue can be found on the HPPSC web page at:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/herschel/pacs-point-source-catalogue

The catalogue consists of three major tables, one HPPSC table for each band, provided as compressed comma-separated value format files. Two additional tables are provided in the same format: one is a list of slightly extended sources (HPESL) and one is a rejected source list (HPRSL). Links for each table can be found below:

For your convenience, you can also perform queries around a particular position in the sky using the Catalog Search Tool for Herschel data available from NASA's Infrared Science Archive (IRSA), or the TAP (Table Access Protocol) service provided by the Herschel Science Archive through convenient VO tools like TOPCAT. The Herschel/PACS Point Source Catalogue is also available through ESASky.

The PACS instrument onboard Herschel mapped ~8% of the far-infrared sky. The broad-band filters were centered at 70, 100 and 160 μm, allowing an angular resolution of 5.6ʺ, 6.8ʺ and 11.3ʺ, respectively. A total number of 14,842 PACS maps were searched for catalogue sources, which were obtained as part of 430 different observing proposals, all performed in standard observing modes, but with a wide variety of science goals.

The construction procedure, the content and validation processes are detailed in the HPPSC Explanatory Supplement. We emphasize the importance of this document in allowing users to perform valid scientific studies with the catalogue. As it was derived from far-infrared observations, the Galactic cirrus emission is a major limiting factor in photometric accuracy, completeness and reliability. Please read the Cautionary Notes carefully in order to be aware of the caveats on the provided products.

Kind regards,