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A. Kashlinsky, S. Odenwald, J. Mather (Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Skrutskie (Dept of Astronomy, U. of Massachussets), R. Cutri (IPAC, Caltech, Pasadena)
We report first results from a search for the cosmic infrared background (CIB) fluctuations at 1.25, 1.65 and 2 micron in long exposure 2MASS data. Such long exposure data come from the 2MASS standard star fields. We have co-added and analyzed one such field with a total exposure time of over 1 hour, and removed resolved and point sources and other artifacts. The stars and galaxies were removed out to K ~ 20 mag/arcsec2 leaving only high-z galaxies (or possibly local low-surface-brightness systems). We find the residual component for the diffuse emission that over the angular scales from a few arcsec to a few arcmin has slope consistent with the emission produced by galaxies clustered with the two-point correlation function \xi \propto r-1.6. The noise (and residual artifacts) contribution to the signal is small and we identify the latter as CIB fluctuations from the faint unresolved galaxies. The amplitude of the signal is consistent with the earlier and high CIB levels found in the DIRBE and IRTS data analyses, but this is the first probe of the CIB structure on small angular scales and from only faint galaxy populations.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: kashlinsky@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov