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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2016
Infrared wavelengths are free of several of the problems that plague optical galaxy surveys. At high galactic latitude ≥99% of 60μ sources in the IRAS Point Source Catalog, after deletion of obvious stars, are galaxies. At lower latitudes care has to be taken to avoid confusion with emission from interstellar dust (the ‘cirrus’). IRAS galaxies have been used to determined the direction of the gravitational acceleration acting on the Local Group due to galaxies and clusters within about 200 Mpc. This agrees well with the direction of the microwave background dipole. The density of matter in the universe, distributed like IRAS galaxies, needed to account for the observed velocity of the Local Group, corresponds to Ωo = 1.0 ± 0.2. In the standard hot Big Bang model, 90–95% of this matter would have to be non-baryonic.
IRAS galaxies are significantly less clustered than optically selected galaxy samples.