The WISE 3-Band Cryo Data Release products are comprised of data taken during the mission's 3-Band Cryo survey phase. This phase covers the time following the exhaustion of solid hydrogen in the WISE payload outer cryogen tank, while the detectors and telescope were still cooled by the inner cryogen tank. During this time, WISE's W1, W2 and W3 bands were operational and continued to acquire useful data, but the W4 detector was saturated by thermal emission from the warming telescope. The sensitivity achieved in the W1 and W2 bands was similar to that during the full cryogenic mission phase. The W3 measurement sensitivity was degraded and decreased steadily during the 3-Band Cryo phase because of the increasing telescope temperature and decreasing exposure times.

The WISE 3-Band Cryo Image Atlas is comprised of 5,649 4095x4095 pix at 1.375"/pix FITS format image sets. Each image set consists of intensity images, coverage maps, and uncertainty maps, one each for the W1, W2, and W3 bands.