2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog

https://doi.org/10.26131/IRSA2
https://www.ipac.caltech.edu/doi/10.26131/IRSA2

10.26131/IRSA2

IPAC

Skrutskie, M. F.; Cutri, R. M.; Stiening, R.; Weinberg, M. D.; Schneider, S.; Carpenter, J. M.; Beichman, C.; Capps, R.; Chester, T.; Elias, J.; Huchra, J.; Liebert, J.; Lonsdale, C.; Monet, D. G.; Price, S.; Seitzer, P.; Jarrett, T.; Kirkpatrick, J. D.; Gizis, J. E.; Howard, E.; Evans, T.; Fowler, J.; Fullmer, L.; Hurt, R.; Light, R.; Kopan, E. L.; Marsh, K. A.; McCallon, H. L.; Tam, R.; Van Dyk, S.; Wheelock, S.

2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog

The 2MASS project made uniformly-calibrated observations of the entire sky in the J (1.24 µm), H (1.66 µm) and Ks (2.16 µm) near-infrared bands with a pixel size of 2.0 arcsec. Sources brighter than about 1 mJy in each band were detected with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) greater than 10.

2MASS provides:

An unprecedented view of the Milky Way, nearly free of the obscuring effects of interstellar dust, that is revealing the true distribution of luminous mass and thus the largest structures over the extent of the Galaxy.

The first all-sky photometric census of galaxies brighter than Ks=13.5 mag, including galaxies in the 60 degree-wide "Zone of Avoidance," where dust within the Milky Way renders optical galaxy surveys incomplete. The final Catalog of >1,500,000 galaxies provides a rich statistical database, including photometric measurements in three wavelengths and a few structural parameters for large samples of galaxies in differing environments, measured at wavelengths which are sensitive to the stellar populations dominating the luminous mass.

The statistical basis to search for rare, but astrophysically important, objects, which are either cool, and thus extremely red (e.g., extremely low-luminosity stars and brown dwarfs), or heavily obscured at optical wavelengths (e.g., dust-obscured AGNs and globular clusters located in the Galactic plane).

Please include the following standard acknowledgment in any published material that makes use of 2MASS data products:

"This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation."

This dataset or service is made available by the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) at IPAC, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Dataset

https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/Gator/nph-scan?mission=irsa&submit=Select&projshort=2MASS

1997-2001