2MASS Overview
Highly uniform digital imaging survey of the entire sky in three near IR bands
- Identical, dedicated 1.3m telescopes at Mt. Hopkins and CTIO
- Three NICMOS 3 arrays for simultaneous imaging in J(1.25mm) H(1.65mm) and Ks(2.17mm)
Data Products
- Calibrated Image Atlas (~4e6 512x1024 1”/pix FITS images in the 3 survey bands)
- Point Source Catalog (astrometry and photometry for ~3.5e8 point sources)
- SNR=10:1 at ~1mJy (J.8, H.1 Ks.3), positional accuracy ɘ.3" RMS wrt ICRS
- Extended Source Catalog (positions and photometry for ~2e6 resolved sources, mostly galaxies)
- SNR=10:1 at ~4mJy (J.0, H.6, Ks.5)
Survey Status
- 100% of the sky observed (Feb 2001)
- Data products covering 48% of the sky now
in public domain
- Final data processing of full data set completed
Feb 2002,
- Catalog generation and validation in progress
- Full-sky data release in Sept 2002
All-sky JHKs composite point source surface density map