Session 75 - 2MASS.
Display session, Wednesday, January 17
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center

## [75.04] The K-band Galaxy Luminosity Function: Results from the 2MASS Prototype Camera for Two Clusters

S. Schneider, W. Pughe (UMass), J. Huchra (CfA), T. J. Chester, T. Jarrett (JPL/Caltech)

During engineering runs, the 2MASS prototype camera made K-band scans covering several tens of square degrees around the Coma cluster and Abell 262 (in the Pisces-Perseus supercluster region). The galaxy counts in these clusters are relatively complete to absolute magnitudes of about K_s \sim -21, which is \sim2 mag fainter than the ``knee'' in the luminosity function. To establish cluster membership, we have collected redshift data for most of the galaxies, and these data are almost complete for galaxies brighter than K_s \sim -22.5. We use the measured distribution with redshift for these brighter galaxies along with a Schechter luminosity function (which we converge on iteratively) to estimate the K-band luminosity function to the survey's limits.