  The Master Catalogue of stars towards the Magellanic Clouds (MC2) is a
multi-wavelength reference catalogue. The current paper presents the first
results of the MC2 project. We started with a massive cross-identification of
the two recently released near-infrared surveys: the DENIS Catalogue towards
the Magellanic Clouds (DCMC) with more than 1.3 million sources identified in
at least two of the three DENIS filters (I J Ks) and the 2nd Incremental
Release of the 2MASS point source catalogue (J H Ks) covering the same region
of the sky. Both point source catalogues provide an unprecedented wealth of
data on the stellar populations of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs). The
cross-matching procedure has been extended to optical wavelength ranges,
including the UCAC1 (USNO) and GSC2.2 catalogues. New cross-matching procedures
for very large catalogues have been developed and important results on the
astrometric and photometric accuracy of the cross-identified catalogues were
derived. The cross-matching of large surveys is an essential tool to improve
our understanding of their specific contents. This study has been partly
supported by the ASTROVIRTEL project that aims at improving access to
astronomical archives as virtual telescopes.
