Impact of Near-Infrared Sky Surveys on Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy

Thirty years after the pioneering enterprise of Neugebauer and collabo­ rators, the astronomical sky is surveyed anew in the near infrared range with a gain in sensitivity greater than 4 orders of magnitude. Data have started to come through the "pipelines" routinely and at the turn of the century, the astronomical community will be provided with immense databases that will eventually contain accu...