THE UNITED-STATES-NAVAL-OBSERVATORY CATALOG OF POSITIONS OF INFRARED STELLAR SOURCES

Star identifications in the IRAS Point Source Catalog have been combined with optical positions from four astrometric catalogs to yield a catalog with positional accuracies of about 0.2 arcsec for 33 678 infrared sources. The identification of IRAS sources with bright optical stars has been checked by requiring the color V-[12] (with [12] being a magnitude derived from the IRAS flux) to be consistent with the optical colors or spectral type. Observed V-[12] colors several magnitudes redder than predicted from optical colors have usually been interpreted as evidence of excess 12 mum flux, but many stars with such colors are shown also to have an overly red V-K color. The K magnitude (2.2 mum) has been estimated using the 12 mum flux and the spectral type or observed optical color for each of the 18 525 stars that have no evidence of an unusual 12 mum flux.