II. Contents of the 2MASS Second Incremental Data Release


2. Point Source Catalog (PSC):

a. Point Source Catalog Format

b. PSC Catalog Selection Criteria:

The Second Incremental Release PSC was drawn from a database of all detections found in the 27,493 Tiles included in the release area. This Working Database contains approximately a factor of two more objects than are in the PSC, and a large number are simply detections of noise. The source detection thresholds in 2MASS pipeline data processing are set intentionally low to insure completeness. A rigorous set of selection criteria, described in detail in Section V.3, are applied to each source in the working database to extract a set of Catalog sources that meet the demanding reliability requirements of 2MASS:

Users are recommended to review the Cautionary Notes for the PSC in Section I.6.b for known features of and problems in the Catalog.

c. General Properties:

Figure 1Figure 2

Figure 3Figure 4Figure 5Figure 6

d. Photometric Properties:

Figure 7

Figure 8Figure 9Figure 10Figure 11

e. Astrometric Properties:

f. Miscellaneous:

Figure 12Figure 13

[Last Updated: 2000 February 21, by R. Cutri]



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