07.01.2013 Views

Digital Universe Guide - Hayden Planetarium

Digital Universe Guide - Hayden Planetarium

Digital Universe Guide - Hayden Planetarium

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

3.3. MILKY WAY DATA GROUPS 119<br />

3.3.26 Two Micron (2MASS) All-Sky Survey<br />

Group Name mw2MASS<br />

Reference Two Micron All-Sky Survey<br />

(UMass, IPAC/CalTech, NASA, NSF)<br />

Prepared by Tom Jarrett (IPAC/CalTech),<br />

Brian Abbott (AMNH/<strong>Hayden</strong>)<br />

Labels No<br />

Files mw-2mass.speck<br />

Dependencies mw-2mass-1024.sgi<br />

Wavelength 1.24, 1.66, 2.16 microns<br />

Frequency 241,936, 180,723, 138,889 GHz<br />

The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) is an infrared (IR) survey of the sky. Because it is looking in<br />

the IR and this is a composite of the 2MASS point-source catalog, most of the light from this survey is<br />

starlight. In visible light, clouds of gas and dust obscure our view. However, in IR the longer wavelengths<br />

of light can penetrate these clouds without being scattered, thereby revealing stars that would normally<br />

be hidden to our eye.<br />

The 2MASS data were taken over 1,400 nights from 1997 to 2001 with two, 1.3-meter telescopes<br />

located on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona, and Cerro Tololo, Chile. Each telescope had identical IR detectors that<br />

could observe light at 1.24, 1.66, and 2.16 micron wavelengths. The 2MASS Image Atlas contains more<br />

than 4 million images in these wavelengths that cover 99.998% of the sky.<br />

The 2MASS image contains many point sources. If you turn up the image’s brightness (using the<br />

Alpha Slider) and turn off the stars, you will see many of the stars in the image align with the<br />

constellation outlines. Many of the stars, particularly cooler stars, shine in the infrared. If you look<br />

toward Orion, you’ll see many of the hotter stars in that constellation are not visible or as bright.<br />

Conversely, Betelgeuse, the red giant, is bright, radiating much of its light in the infrared.<br />

The Galaxy itself is quite prominent, with the bright disk and the Galactic bulge toward the center of<br />

the Milky Way and virtually no disk showing toward Orion, away from Galactic center. Clouds of gas and<br />

dust are also apparent and are a brownish color, correlating exactly with the carbon monoxide all-sky<br />

survey (mwCO group). You will see some distortion artifacts toward the Galactic poles. This is from the<br />

process of wrapping the image on a sphere.<br />

Few features pop out as they do on other surveys. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are<br />

visible, as is the glow of the Pleiades star cluster, but beyond these, the survey is mainly starlight.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!