Two Micron All Sky Survey
In the infrared astronomy is Two Micron All Sky Survey (short 2MASS called) an important survey of the entire sky in the near infrared at wavelengths of 1.25 microns (the J-band ), 1.65 micrometers (in the H band) and 2 .17 micrometers (in the K s band). The observations started in 1997 and ended in 2001.
2MASS is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts (UMASS) and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at the California Institute of Technology . It was carried out with two specially equipped 1.3 m automated telescopes ; for the northern sky at the Fred-Lawrence-Whipple Observatory in Arizona and for the southern sky at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile . The telescopes had cameras with three channels, with a 256 × 256 element HgCdTe detector for each of the three wavelengths.
2MASS generated very large and homogeneous data sets that are important for many astronomical problems. This includes:
- A digital atlas of the entire sky in the near infrared with a resolution of 4 arc seconds
- A point source catalog with positions and brightnesses for about 470 million stars and other unresolved objects
- A catalog of extensive sources with positions and magnitudes for approximately 1.6 million galaxies and other large objects.
The objects discovered by 2MASS have names such as 2MASS J08523490 + 4720359 . The two numbers correspond to the right ascension and declination in hours, minutes and (decimal) seconds.