The Interpretation of Near-Infrared Star Counts at the South Galactic Pole

We present new deep K ′ counts of stars at the South Galactic Pole (SGP) taken with the NAOJ PICNIC camera to K =17.25. Star–galaxy separation to K =17.5 was accomplished effectively using image profiles because the pixel size we used is 0.509 arcsec. We interpret these counts using the SKY (Cohen 1994) model of the Galactic point source sky and determine the relative normalization of halo-to-disk populations, and the location of the Sun relative to the Galactic plane, within the context of this model. The observed star counts constrain these parameters to be: halo/disk ∼1/900 and z⊙=16.5±2.5 pc. These values have been used to correct our SGP galaxy counts for contamination by the point source Galactic foreground.