Previous
abstract 
Next
abstract
Session 50 - Interstellar Medium I.
Display session, Thursday, January 08
Exhibit Hall,
The MSX Infrared Point Source catalog is scheduled for release in early 1998. The catalog covers those areas of the sky missed by IRAS and the entire galactic plane (360 degrees), for b = +/- 5 degrees. The scan pattern was tailored for the objectives of each of the surveys. The Galactic plane was covered by 75 scans in longitude at constant latitude. The first survey began at the Galactic plane with offsets of 0.45 in latitude. A second set of scans is interleaved with the first survey to provide four pass redundancy in the first and fourth quadrants (except for two of scans at > +4 latitude) and for |b| < 3 in the second and third quadrants. Similarly, four pass redundancy was obtained by 64 scans over the two IRAS gaps. The IRAS geometry of a defined rotation pole, a "zenith" angle and azimuth limits were used to efficiently cover the areas.
MSX has taken IR data in 5 photometric bands, centered at 4.3, 8.3, 12.1, 14.7, and 21.4 \mu m. The MSX infrared detectors are approximately 18" square, on 9" centers, so that the MSX survey avoids the confusion problems inherent in the IRAS survey near the galactic plane. We intend to catalog sources above 3, 0.1, 0.2, 0.2,and 0.5 Jy in each band, respectively. We shall present initial results on the statistics of the catalog, including reliability and completeness, position accuracy and precision, and flux accuracy. Characteristics of sources in different color planes will be examined.
