Strategies for Imaging Faint Extended Sources in the Near-Infrared
  Quantitative information about variations in the background at J and K' are presented and used to develop guidelines for the acquisition and reduction of ground-based images of faint extended sources in the near-infrared, especially those which occupy a significant fraction of the field of view of a detector or which are located in areas crowded with foreground or background sources. Findings are based primarily upon data acquired over three photometric nights with the 3.6x3.6 arcmin CFHT-IR array on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope atop Mauna Kea. Although some results are specific to CFHT, overall conclusions should be useful in guiding observing and reduction strategies of extended objects elsewhere. 
Ovidiu Vaduvescu and Marshall L. McCall