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Published July 10, 2001 | Version Published + Accepted Version
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The Cosmic Infrared Background at 1.25 and 2.2 Microns Using DIRBE and 2MASS: A Contribution Not Due to Galaxies?

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Abstract

Using the 2MASS second incremental data release and the zodiacal subtracted mission average maps of COBE/DIRBE, we estimate the cosmic background in the J (1.25 μm) and K (2.2 μm) bands using selected areas representing ~550 deg^2 of sky. We find a J background of 22.9 ± 7.0 kJy sr^(-1) (54.0 ± 16.8 nW m^(-2) sr^(-1)) and a K background of 20.4 ± 4.9 kJy sr^(-1) (27.8 ± 6.7 nW m^(-2) sr^(-1)). This large-scale study shows that the main uncertainty comes from the residual zodiacal emission. The cosmic background we obtain is significantly higher than integrated galaxy counts (3.6 ± 0.8 kJy sr^(-1) and 5.3 ± 1.2 kJy sr^(-1) for J and K, respectively), suggesting either an increase of the galaxy luminosity function for magnitudes fainter than 30 mag or the existence of another contribution to the cosmic background from primeval stars, black holes, or relic particle decay.

Additional Information

© 2001. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2000 September 20; accepted 2001 March 6. We are grateful to Roc Cutri for his help in accessing the 2MASS data and for his critical reading of this paper and to George Helou for helpful discussions. This publication makes use of data products from 2MASS, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by NASA and NSF. The COBE data sets were developed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center under the guidance of the COBE Science Working Group and were provided by the NSSDC. L. Cambrésy acknowledges partial support from the Lavoisier grant of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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Eprint ID
76306
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CaltechAUTHORS:20170408-171320819

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0103078 (URL)

Funding

NASA/JPL/Caltech
NSF
Ministre de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères

Dates

Created
2018-03-12
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Updated
2021-11-15
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Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)