Infrared Scrutiny

From: NASANews@hq.nasa.gov <NASANews@hq.nasa.gov>
Date: 18. september 1997 23:46
Subject: Twin Telescopes with Near-Infrared \"Eyes\" Begin All-Sky Survey

Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC September 17, 1997
(Phone: 202/358-1547)

Jane Platt
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
(Phone: 818/354-0880)

The first of a pair of new telescopes, funded primarily by NASA, has begun an ambitious three-and-a-half year near-infrared survey of the entire celestial sky, peering through the curtain of interstellar dust in the Milky Way galaxy. ...

The Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), based at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, features two 1.3-meter telescopes, one at a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory site atop Mount Hopkins, near Tucson, AZ, and the other at a National Optical Astronomy Observatories site in Cerro Tololo, Chile. ...

2MASS will observe many known asteroids and possibly some comets, and it is uniquely sensitive to exotic objects like brown dwarfs, which lack the mass needed to ignite and become full-fledged stars. ...

The 2MASS survey will measure accurately the positions and infrared brightness of stars and galaxies. Combined with complementary ground-based red shift surveys, the 2MASS extra-galactic data will provide a three-dimensional view of large-scale structures in the local universe. ...

These technologies, funded through the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, are being adapted for astronomical purposes to increase sensitivity dramatically. It's expected the new survey will be some 25,000 times more sensitive than a precursor survey at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, nearly 30 years ago. ...

Data will be processed at JPL's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Every two nights, the center will process 60 gigabytes of data, which is more data than processed during the entire Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) mission of 1983. ...