An Optical-UV-IR Survey of the North Celestial Cap: I. The Catalogue

We describe the final product of the North Celestial Cap Survey (NCC Survey, NCCS) - the optical-UV-IR merged catalogue for the region within 10 deg of the North Celestial Pole. The NCC region at DEC > 80 deg is poorly covered by modern CCD-based surveys. The optical part of the survey was observed in V, R and I with the Wise Observatory telescopes and was merged with GALEX UV and WISE IR data, producing the catalogue. More than four million objects were observed in at least one optical band. The final catalogue contains ~1.6 million sources observed in all three optical bands, of which some 1.4 million have WISE counterparts and ~300,000 have GALEX counterparts. The astrometric accuracy of the optical NCCS data, derived from a comparison with the UCAC3 catalogue, is better than 0.2 arcsec and the photometry, when compared with SDSS, is good to ~0.15 mag for sources brighter than V = 20.3, R = 21.0 and I = 19.2 mag. The SDSS point-extended source separation is reproduced with >92% efficiency.