Distribution and studies of the infrared stellar population in the Galaxy. II. The data base.

In this paper the author utilised his galactic model in order to predict the Cumulative Counts Function (CCF) (log. of the number of sources down to a given K-magnitude per unit of area) in 39 directions of the sky. He presents stellar-counts observations for these directions and compares the observational results with the predictions of the model. The authors conclude that the global description of the distribution of the stellar population responsible for the 2.2 μm radiation in our Galaxy is very well represented by the model's predictions. There are a few regions for which the global description is not satisfactory. The author presents evidence for some cases that this is due to anomalous stellar concentrations or to excess or deficiency of absorption.