The National Academy of Sciences has awarded the James Craig Watson Medal to Michael F. Skrutskie (Univ. of Virginia) and IPAC deputy executive director Roc M. Cutri "for their monumental work in developing and completing the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), thus enabling a thrilling variety of explorations in astronomy and astrophysics." The James Craig Watson Medal has been awarded since 1887 to recognize extraordinary scientific achievements the science of astronomy.

Roc Cutri was the data processing lead scientist for the 2MASS project which involved tbout two dozen team members from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC). 2MASS was a joint project of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at the California Institute of Technology. The project was conducted using twin, highly automated telescopes located in Arizona and Chile that surveyed the entire sky in three near-infrared bands during a period of 3.5 years. 2MASS produced the first high-resolution digital survey of the infrared sky, achieving an 80,000-fold improvement in sensitivity compared to earlier surveys, and provided an unprecedented view of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. The survey observations were successfully completed in February 2001.

The IPAC team developed the software to convert raw digital data from the telescopes into images and catalogs. They created products that include an atlas of over 4 million digital images, and catalogs containing over 450 million point sources (stars, planets, asteroids) and over 1.6 million extended sources (galaxies, nebulae). In conjunction with the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA), the team was also responsible for archiving and distributing the 2MASS data. The products are freely accessible to astronomers and the general public via the internet. Astronomers continue to use 2MASS data to support astronomical research and observation planning.

According to Roc Cutri, "2MASS has shown the importance and remarkable value returned by large-area surveys of the sky by enabling research in virtually every area of astronomy by scientists all over the world. It has also served to inspire the next generation of infrared sky surveys that are being planned by American and European astronomers."

Scientists using data from 2MASS discovered the existence of very cool dwarf stars and star-like objects, cooler than what was previously known, and confirmed the existence of brown dwarfs, rich in atmospheric methane. The ability for 2MASS to penetrate through our Galaxy's dust allowed astronomers to discover new star forming regions and to discover previously unknown galaxies. The 2MASS survey also led to a more accurate count of the number of galaxies in our local Universe and to a better understanding how they are distributed giving astronomers information on how galaxies formed and evolved since the Big Bang.

In May 2006, the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) team was awarded the Maria and Eric Muhlmann Award "for recent significant observational results made possible by innovative advances in astronomical instrumentation, software, or observational infrastructure."

+  Caltech Press Release

+  National Academy of Sciences Press Release