The Combined XSC and PSC Allsky

2MASS Local Universe: As seen in the 2MASS Near-Infrared bands: J (1.2 microns), H (1.6 microns) and Ks (2.2 microns). The All Sky image is composed of sources with integrated fluxes brighter than Ks=14th mag, comprising the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC) -- more than 1.6 million galaxies, and the Point Source Catalog (PSC) -- nearly 0.5 billion Milky Way stars (here tinted in blue to show contrast with the background galaxies.) The map is projected with an equal area aitoff in the Geo-equatorial system (centered at 6 hr Right Ascension). The plane of the Milky Way runs diagonally across the image, with the Galactic anti-center facing you.

Note: Known Milky Way sources (e.g., HII regions) have been removed from the XSC ALLSKY image, and thus the remaining XSC image is nearly 100% extragalactic in nature. Galactic (Milky Way) sources are primarily confined to the Plane of the Galaxy, as is easily seen in the XSC vs. PSC movie shown below.


SuperGalactic View of the Local Universe



2MASS Integrated Flux Allsky Movie
Aitoff equal-area projection of the integrated PSC and XSC flux for cummulative mag bins. See the LSS chart for image orientation and Large Scale Structure map. The PSC FITS images are courtesy of John Carpenter.