II. User's Guide to the 2MASS All-Sky Data Release

3. Extended Source Catalog (XSC)

c. General Properties

ii. All-Sky Images of the XSC

Movies

2MASS XSC Cumulative All-sky Movie

Aitoff equal-area projection of the integrated XSC flux for cumulative magnitude bins.

2MASS XSC Differential All-sky Movie

Here we show the mean integrated flux for differentiated magnitude bins. Notice that for the faintest mag bins the mean colors are more red than for the brightest magnitude bins -- this is the redshift K-correction phenomenon. See Figure 3 for image orientation and a map of the large scale structure.

As demonstrated below, the XSC is completely decoupled (for |glat| > 3°) from the PSC, since it is dominated by galaxies. Note the very red sources spanning the Galactic plane (|glat| < 3°) -- these are predominantly Milky Way in origin (and have been removed from the combined XSC+PSC all-sky image, shown above).

2MASS Integrated Flux All-sky Movie.

Aitoff equal-area projection of the integrated PSC and XSC flux for cumulative magnitude bins. The PSC FITS images are courtesy of J. Carpenter (Caltech).

[Last Updated: 2002 Oct 23; by T. Jarrett]