The VMC survey VII. Reddening map of the 30 Doradus field and the structure of the cold interstellar medium

Abstract

Context: The details of how galaxies have evolved are imprinted in their star formation history, chemical enrichment and morpho-kinematic structure. Parameters behind these can be measured by combining photometric techniques with modelling. However, there are uncertainties from the ambiguity of colour and magnitude and the effects of interstellar reddening. Aims: In this paper we present a detailed reddening map of the central 30 Doradus region of the Large Magellanic Cloud; for community use and to test the methods used. The reddening, a measurement of dust extinction, acts as a tracer of the interstellar medium (ISM). Methods: Near infrared photometry of red clump stars are used to measure reddening as extinction is the main cause of their colour and magnitude variance. The star formation history is used to convert colour to reddening values which are subsequently converted to visual extinction. Results: Presented is a dust map for the 30 Doradus field. This map samples a region of 1x1.5 deg, containing ~1.5x10^5 red clump stars which probe reddening up to AV=6 mag. We compare our map with maps from the literature, including optical extinction maps and radio, mid- and far-infrared maps of atomic hydrogen and dust emission. Through estimation of column density we locate molecular clouds. Conclusions: This new reddening map shows correlation with equivalent maps in the literature, validating the method of red clump star selection. We make our reddening map available for community use. In terms of ISM the red clump stars appear to be more affected by the cooler dust measured by 70 micron emission because there is stronger correlation between increasing emission and extinction due to red clump stars not being located near hot stars that would heat the dust. The transition from atomic hydrogen to molecular hydrogen occurs between densities of NH=4x10^21 to 6x10^21 cm^-2.

Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Full abstract in pdf. 26 pages, 25 figures

References in corpus (4)

• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury IX. Constraining asymptotic giant branch evolution with old metal-poor galaxies
• The VISTA Science Archive
• New Optical Reddening Maps of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds
• Distances to Populous Clusters in the LMC via the K-Band Luminosity of the Red Clump

Cited by in corpus (40)

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• OGLE-ing the Magellanic System: Optical Reddening Maps of the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud from Red Clump Stars
• The VMC survey - XXXI. The spatially resolved star formation history of the main body of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey XVI. The optical+NIR extinction laws in 30 Doradus and the photometric determination of the effective temperatures of OB stars
• SMASHing the LMC: A Tidally-induced Warp in the Outer LMC and a Large-scale Reddening Map
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury VIII: A Wide-Area, High-Resolution Map of Dust Extinction in M31
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