GLIMPSE

• Team Pages
  (password required)
  
  
• Legacy Science Working Group (password required)
  
  
• GLIMPSE Talks
  
  
• Project Summary
  (pdf file)
  
  
• Survey Implementation
  
  
• GLIMPSE Documents
  
  
• GLIMPSE Publications
  
  
• Objects in the GLIMPSE field
  
  
• 2MASS & MSX images in the GLIMPSE field
  
  
• Complementary Datasets
  
  
• Milky Way Surveys: The Structure & Evolution of Our Galaxy (The 5th Boston University Astrophysics Conference June 15-17,2003)
  
  
• Useful IR Web Tools
  
  
• Participants
  
  
• Misc team pictures
  
  
• About GLIMPSE and Spitzer
  
  
• Spitzer Legacy Programs
  
  
• Spitzer Education & Outreach
  
  
• News
  
  
• GLIMPSE Milestones
  
  
• Spitzer home page
  
  

Survey Observations Taken:
*** March 09 -13, 2004 (l=-55 to -38 deg) ***
*** March 31 -April 03, 2004 (l=-38 to -23 deg) ***
*** April 21 -24, 2004 (l=25 to 40 deg) ***

*** Next Survey Observations: Jul 31 -Aug 02, 2004 (l=-67 to -54 deg) ***

Picture of the Week

bub_308.72_0.63

Picture of the Week Archives

another version of Picture of the Week Archives, with a different way of navigating between pictures (5-15-04)

GLIMPSE Survey Region

GLIMPSE - the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire - will be a fully sampled, confusion limited, 4-band near- to mid-infrared survey of the inner two-thirds of the Galactic disk with a spatial resolution of ~2". The Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) will be used to image 200 square degrees at wavelengths centered on 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 microns in the Galactic longitude range 10 deg to 65 deg on both sides of the Galactic center and in Galactic latitude +/- 1 deg. About 780 million resolution elements will be required to cover this area at each wavelength.

The area covered by GLIMPSE contains most of the star formation activity in the Galaxy and ~70% of the molecular gas in the Galaxy. The inner cutoff at |l| = 10 deg permits adequate sampling of both ends of the purported ~3 kpc central bar and possibly some of the nuclear bulge stellar population. We expect to determine the asymmetry of the bar (brighter at l>0 deg) with high accuracy. The outer cutoff at |l| = 65 deg includes all of the 5 kpc molecular ring, the Sagittarius spiral arm tangent, and the Norma spiral arm tangent. The Galactic center region is not included because of its extreme background brightness and high confusion limits.

The GLIMPSE Survey will provide a comprehensive view of the stellar dust content in the inner Galaxy. The broad scope of this unbiased survey will provide a global understanding that studies of narrowly-defined, selected regions cannot. GLIMPSE will enable a wide range of stellar and interstellar science. The GLIMPSE team will focus on two important scientific questions:
(1) What is the structure of the inner Galaxy, including the disk, molecular ring, number and location of spiral arms, and central bar as traced by the spatial distribution of stars and IR- bright star formation regions?
(2) What are the statistics and physics of star formation as a function of mass, stage of evolution, and location in the Milky Way?

The team will provide the following products: a high reliability GLIMPSE Point Source Catalog (GPSC), a GLIMPSE Point Source Archive (GPSA; ~5 sigma), and a Mosaiced Image Atlas of the entire surveyed area at all four IRAC bands, all of which will be made available via the IPAC data archive. In addition, a set of web modeling tools will be provided that will permit users to analyze and interpret Spitzer and other IR data. The IPAC data archive can cross-reference the GLIMPSE catalogs with other databases in its archive such as 2MASS and MSX. A preliminary version of the GPSC will be released 9 months after Launch. We expect to catalog about 50 million sources detected with S/N >= 5.