View source for 2 Micron All Sky Survey - 2MASS

'''2MASS''' the '''2 Micron All Sky''' survey is an all sky survey in the 2 micron range that used both northern and southern hemisphere telescopes to cover the whole sky from 1997 through 2001 with a final post processing release in 2003. 

According to wikipedia, the goals of 2MASS were to look into the areas of the Milky way hidden in visible light, to look for brown dwarfs and low mass stars and to create a catalog of all of the galaxies and stars 2MASS could detect.



[[File:2 Mass north.jpg|300px|thumb|left|2MASS North Mt. Hopkins and M57 from IPAC image gallery]][[File:2 Mass south.jpg|400px|thumb|right|2MASS South Cerro Tololo CTIO Chili  from IPAC image gallery]]

'''[http://skynet.unc.edu/promptcam/ Click here to see a live webcam pointed at 2MASS south via SKYNET remote network.]''' <BR><BR>

*wavelengths J (1.25 um), H (1.65 um), and Ks (2.17 um) in the Near Infrared (NIR)
*over 500 million sources in the point source catalog
*1.6 million sources in the extended source catalog (I don't know what this means yet:) 
*catalogs publicly available.



'''[http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/overview/about2mass.html/  There is a lot more info here at the IPAC 2MASS page]'''

But I have not read through it all and I '''still''' don't know why its '''J, H, K''' which is '''not''' the order of the alphabet and it really bugs me!


'''[http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gallery/pow.html/   2MASS Picture of the Week]'''
[[File:2 Mass POW Orion.jpg|400px|thumb|right| Orion - Atlas Image courtesy of 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF]]