What are IRAS sources? Do IRAS sources refer to star forming regions? I searched google and I came to know that it stands for IR astronomical satellite.But what do they search for? Please help me
The IRAS Point Source Catalog, Version 2.0, is a catalog of some 250,000 well-confirmed infrared point sources observed by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), i.e., sources with angular extents less than approximately 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 arcminutes in the in-scan direction at 12, 25, 60, and 100 microns (um), respectively. 


This includes some comets, planetary disks, and even minor planets. Some sources are likely to be star forming, but an IR source meeting the spec above could be many things.