THE WISE CATALOG OF GALACTIC H II REGIONS

Using data from the all-sky Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, we made a catalog of over 8000 Galactic H II regions and H II region candidates by searching for their characteristic mid-infrared (MIR) morphology. WISE has sufficient sensitivity to detect the MIR emission from H II regions located anywhere in the Galactic disk. We believe this is the most complete catalog yet of regions forming massive stars in the Milky Way. Of the similar to 8000 cataloged sources, similar to 1500 have measured radio recombination line (RRL) or Ha emission, and are thus known to be H II regions. This sample improves on previous efforts by resolving H II region complexes into multiple sources and by removing duplicate entries. There are similar to 2500 candidate H II regions in the catalog that are spatially coincident with radio continuum emission. Our group's previous RRL studies show that similar to 95% of such targets are H II regions. We find that similar to 500 of these candidates are also positionally associated with known H II region complexes, so the probability of their being bona fide H II regions is even higher. At the sensitivity limits of existing surveys, similar to 4000 catalog sources show no radio continuum emission. Using data from the literature, we find distances for similar to 1500 catalog sources, and molecular velocities for similar to 1500 H II region candidates.