2006•The Astronomical JournalOpen access
The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)
Michael F. Skrutskie, R. M. Cutri, R. Stiening, Martin D. Weinberg, Stephen E. Schneider, John M. Carpenter, Charles Beichman, R. W. Capps, T. J. Chester, J. H. Elias, J. P. Huchra, James Liebert, C. J. Lonsdale, D. G. Monet, S. Price, Patrick Seitzer, T. H. Jarrett, J. Davy Kirkpatrick, John E. Gizis, Eric Howard, T. Evans, J. W. Fowler, L. Fullmer, Robert L. Hurt, R. M. Light, E. L. Kopan, K. A. Marsh, H. McCallon, Raymond Tam, Schuyler D. Van Dyk, S. Wheelock
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Abstract
Between 1997 June and 2001 February the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) collected 25.4 Tbytes of raw imaging data covering 99.998% of the celestial sphere in the near-infrared J (1.25 μm), H (1.65 μm), and K s (2.16 μm) bandpasses. Observations were conducted from two dedicated 1.3 m diameter telescopes located at Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and Cerro Tololo, Chile. The 7.8 s of integration time accumulated for each point on the sky and strict quality control yielded a 10 σ point-source detection level of better than 15.8, 15.1, and 14.3 mag at the J , H , and K s bands, respectively, for virtually the entire sky. Bright source extractions have 1 σ photometric uncertainty of <0.03 mag and astrometric accuracy of order 100 mas. Calibration offsets between any two points in the sky are <0.02 mag. The 2MASS All-Sky Data Release includes 4.1 million compressed FITS images covering the entire sky, 471 million source extractions in a Point Source Catalog, and 1.6 million objects identified as extended in an Extended Source Catalog.
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