The late-type barred spiral, NGC 2903, is a nearby large angular-sized galaxy, D₂₅ ~ 10 arcmin. Its near-infrared diameter is ~8 arcmin (see below), spanning several 2MASS Atlas images (including adjacent scans). Hence, cross-scan background removal is critical to successful mosaic construction -- as is the case for most nearby galaxies. The following images show the intermediate steps in the H-band background removal (the H-band is the most difficult case owing to the strong "airglow" emission features in the images).

Step 1. Retrieve Atlas images from database. Retrieve table of "stars" local to the target, also from the database.

Step 2. Place Atlas images on a common grid, subtract the mean background sky value from each Atlas image.

Step 3. Apply offset adjustment to coadd-to-coadd boundaries (common to each scan) when needed. This step is necessary to eliminate artificial "steps" between coadds within a scan. There is typically little if any adjustment needed.

• H-band construction. Note the cross-scan boundary. The image is ~25 arcmin in length.

• Stars & Galaxy Removed. The grey-scale is log-stretched to exaggerate the background.

Step 6. For each pixel of each column, derive the background solution using a cubic polynomial applied with the corresponding in-scan scale-length.

• Column solutions.

• Residual from column solution.

• Row solutions.
  
• Residual from row solution.

• Final solution for the H-band background.

• H-band mosaic of NGC 2903
  
• 3-color mosaic NGC 2903