2MASS
2MASS
Map of the 2MASS Point Source Catalog integrated flux in 5´ × 5´ bins in a Galactic Aitoff projection.
Description
The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) is an astronomical survey of the whole sky in infrared light. It took place between 1997 and 2001, in two different locations: at the U.S. Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, near La Serena, each using a 1.3-meter telescope for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, respectively. It was conducted in the short-wavelength infrared at three distinct frequency bands (J, H, and K) near 2 micrometres, from which the photometric survey derives its name.
2MASS produced an astronomical catalog with over 300 million observed objects, including minor planets of the Solar System, brown dwarfs, low-mass stars, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies.
In addition, 1 million objects were cataloged in the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (2MASX). Both the Point Source Catalog twomass.psc and the Extended Source Catalog twomass.xsc are hosted at Data Lab.
Map of the average Extended Source Catalog integrated flux in 18´ × 18´ bins in an equatorial Aitoff equal-area projection.
The twomass.psc table and twomass.xsc table have been crossmatched against our default reference datasets within a 1.5 arcsec radius, keeping only the nearest neighbors. These tables will appear with x1p5 in their name in our databases. Example: twomass.x1p5__psc__gaia_dr3__gaia_source
Data Access
The 2MASS data are accessible by a variety of means:
Data Lab Table Access Protocol (TAP) service
TAP provides a convenient access layer to the 2MASS catalog database. Users of TAP-aware clients (such as TOPCAT) can search for "Data Lab", or point to https://datalab.noirlab.edu/tap, select the twomass database, and see the tables and descriptions. You can also view the 2MASS tables and descriptions in Data Lab's Data Explorer.
Data Lab Query Client
The Query Client is available as part of the Data Lab software distribution. The Query Client provides a Python API to Data Lab database services. These services include anonymous and authenticated access through synchronous or asynchronous queries of the catalog made directly to the database. Additional Data Lab services for registered users include personal database storage and remote file storage through the Data Lab VOSpace.
The Query Client can be called from a Jupyter Notebook on the Data Lab Notebook server. Example notebooks are provided to users upon creation of their user account (register here), and are also available on GitHub.
