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M.A. Hartman (Department of Astronomy, Harvard University), C.S. Kochanek, M.A. Pahre, J.P. Huchra, E.E. Falco (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
Upcoming deep redshift surveys designed to probe the evolution of galaxies will require accurate determinations of the properties of the local universe, including the faint end slope of the luminosity function and the total luminosity density. Toward this end, the local infrared galaxy luminosity function has been determined for the largest sample of IR-selected galaxies to date. Both a parametric (Schechter function) and non-parametric form of the luminosity function have been fit using a maximum likelihood approach with targets from the extended source catalog of the 2MASS all sky survey. The data used is virtually complete to a K-band magnitude of 11.25 across the entire sky. Certain regions that are complete to a deeper magnitude (from smaller area, deeper redshift surveys) are included to extend the calculation of the luminosity function to dimmer absolute magnitudes. Results from this study are compared to other surveys including 2dF and Sloan.
Additionally, deeper IR images for 450 galaxies were obtained to study in detail the offset between the 2MASS \muK_s = 20 mag/arcsec2 and the total magnitude, which has been previously reported as ~0.1--0.2 mag.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #3
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.