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B.D. Johnson, E.L. Wright (UCLA)
The cosmic infrared background (CIRB) is the sum total of the redshifted and reprocessed radiation from the era of galaxy formation. The intensity and spectrum of the CIRB provide information about the history of star formation, the history of galaxy formation, and the presence or absence of dust in early galaxies. We present tentative detections of the CIRB at 2.2 microns for 10 3x3 degree patches of sky at high galactic latitudes.
These detections are derived from the low-resolution maps of the infrared sky produced by the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). The main problem in determining the CIRB from these maps is the removal of foreground sources. Zodiacal light is subtracted using the zodiacal light model of Kelsall et al. (1998,ApJ,508,44) and Wright (1997,BAAS,29,1354). Stars of our galaxy with 4<K<14 are removed by calculating the contribution of point sources in the 2 Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) catalog to the DIRBE pixels. The 10 patches have been selected so that no sources are saturated in the 2MASS catalog. The contribution of galactic stars with K>14 is determined from the starcount model of Wainscoat, et al. (1992,ApJS,83,111). After the contributions from foreground sources are removed from the DIRBE infrared intensity, the residual signal is taken to be the CIRB.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: bjonson@ucla.edu