Milky Way: How Do I Distinguish Milky Way Fuzz from Background Galaxies?
• See Galactic Extended Sources: Distribution & Colors The 2MASS XSC includes sources that belong to the Milky Way: H II regions, stellar clusters, planetary nebulae, young stellar objects, emission-line nebulae, reflection nebulae. Nearly all Milky Way objects are tightly confined to the Plane of the Galaxy: |glat| XSC Allsky image, lining the Plane in color “red”. These objects are both intrinsically red (e.g., HII regions are dominated by emission bands in the 2 micron window) and dust-reddened. To summarize: • Milky Way objects are mostly confined to the Plane: |glat| • Milky Way objects tend to be very red (J-Ks > 1.5) • Milky Way objects are often large in size (radius > 20″) • Milky Way objects sometimes have corrupted mags (due to their oddball shape and confusion) We have identified some 8,000 sources in the XSC that are probably Milky Way in origin, a smaller subset of 3712 sources are highly probably Galactic in nature. The smaller table of Milky Way sources is given here. M
