All users should download the data release paper. This paper describes the design of the survey, the steps used to validate it, it's completeness and reliability, and a discussion of caveats to the survey.

Due to changes in how the data is processed, the saturation values for the IRAC 5.8 and 8 micron data have increased by large amounts, and are now roughly 200 milliJy at 5.8 microns and 80 milliJy at 8 microns. The following graph illustrates 2MASS-SWIRE colors for the four IRAC channels. Deviations from stellar colors near zero are a result of non-linearity in the SWIRE data. Data Release 1 is shown in black, and Data Release 2 is shown in red.

There is a significant degree of non-linearity in the SWIRE fluxes at 5.8 microns for sources brighter than 100 milliJy. Objects brighter than this flux level have their 5.8 micron fluxes overestimated by as much as 5%. This is visible in the graph above as the deviation upward in the cloud of red points between 100 and 200 milliJy. This effect is due to the underlying linearity correction applied at the SSC, and is common to all IRAC data processed to date. However, we note that almost all objects this bright are likely to be 6th and 7th magnitude stars. All stars this bright are completely saturated in the 3.6 and 4.5 micron channels and do not have very useful SWIRE data in any case.