AN EMPIRICAL DETERMINATION OF THE INTERGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT USING NEAR-INFRARED DEEP GALAXY SURVEY DATA OUT TO 5[mu]m AND THE GAMMA-RAY OPACITY OF THE UNIVERSE

We extend our previous model-independent determination of the intergalactic background light, based purely on galaxy survey data, out to a wavelength of 5 [mu]m. Our approach enables us to constrain the range of photon densities, based on the uncertainties from observationally determined luminosity densities and colors. We further determine a 68% confidence upper and lower limit on the opacity of the universe to [gamma]-rays up to energies of 1.6/(1 + z) TeV. A comparison of our lower limit redshift-dependent opacity curves to the opacity limits derived from the results of both ground-based air Cerenkov telescope and Fermi-LAT observations of PKS 1424+240 allows us to place a new upper limit on the redshift of this source, independent of IBL modeling.