Science with Astronomical Near-Infrared Sky Surveys

Outstanding progress in near-infrared detection technology and in real-time image processing has led astronomers to start undertaking all-sky surveys in the 1-2 mm range (project DENIS in Europe and 2MASS in the USA), surveys which will have a considerable impact in various areas of astronomy. This book gathers the contributions of more than 80 specialists involved in fields of interest as different as low mass stars, late stages of stellar evolution, star formation, stellar populations of the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, the local structure of the Universe and observational cosmology. It describes the impact on these fields of the exhaustive databases and catalogues of stars and galaxies that these surveys will provide. The interest of these documents for the future of infrared space and ground-based projects and the complementarity with other currently ongoing or planned surveys in other spectral ranges are emphasized.