  Foreground emission and scattered light from interplanetary dust (IPD)
particles and emission from Galactic stellar sources are the greatest obstacles
for determining the cosmic infrared background (CIB) from diffuse sky
measurements in the ~ 1 to 5 micron range. We use ground-based observational
limits on the K-band intensity of the CIB in conjunction with skymaps obtained
by the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) on the COBE satellite to
reexamine the limits on the CIB at 1.25, 3.5, and 4.9 microns. Adopting a CIB
intensity of 7.4 nW m-2 sr-1 at 2.2 microns, and using the 2.2 micron DIRBE
skymap from which the emission from IPD cloud has been subtracted, we create a
spatial template of the Galactic stellar contribution to the diffuse infrared
sky. This template is then used to subtract the contribution of the diffuse
Galactic stellar emission from the IPD-emission-subtracted DIRBE skymaps. The
DIRBE 100 micron data are used to estimate the small contribution of emission
from interstellar dust at 3.5 and 4.9 microns. Our method significantly reduces
the errors associated with the subtraction of Galactic starlight, leaving only
the IPD emission component as the primary obstacle for the detection of the CIB
at these wavelengths. This analysis leads to a tentative detection of the CIB
at 3.5 microns. The cosmological implications of these results are discussed in
the paper.
