Infrared extinction in the Inner Milky Way through the red clump giants

Abstract

While the shape of the extinction curve on the infrared is considered to be set and the extinction ratios between infrared bands are usually taken to be approximately constant, a recent number of studies point either to a spatially variable behavior on the exponent of the power law or to a different extinction law altogether. In this paper, we propose a method to analyze the overall behavior of the interstellar extinction by means of the red-clump population, and we apply it to those areas of the Milky Way where the presence of interstellar matter is heavily felt: areas located in 5 deg<l<30 deg and b=0 deg. We show that the extinction ratios traditionally used for the near infrared could be inappropriate for the inner Galaxy and we analyze the behavior of the extinction law from 1 to 8 microns.

Accepted for publication on ApJ

References in corpus (10)

• The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS)
• The UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey
• The WFCAM Science Archive
• The UKIRT Wide Field Camera ZYJHK Photometric System: Calibration from 2MASS
• Interstellar Extinction Law toward the Galactic Center II: V, J, H, and Ks Bands
• An Analysis of the Shapes of Interstellar Extinction Curves. VI. The Near-IR Extinction Law
• The long Galactic bar as seen by UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey
• The complex, variable near infrared extinction towards the Nuclear Bulge
• The Minimum Description Length Principle and Model Selection in Spectropolarimetry
• Metallicity distribution of red giants in the Inner Galaxy from Near Infrared spectra

Cited by in corpus (9)

• A parametric description of the 3D structure of the Galactic Bar/Bulge using the VVV survey
• Measuring the stellar wind parameters in IGR J17544-2619 and Vela X-1 constrains the accretion physics in Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient and classical Supergiant X-ray Binaries
• Extinction law in the range 0.4-4.8 $\mu$m and the 8620 $\mathring{A}$ DIB towards the stellar cluster Westerlund 1
• The Optical -- Mid-infrared Extinction Law of the l=165 Sightline in the Galactic Plane: Diversity of Extinction Law in the Diffuse Interstellar Medium
• Near-infrared photometry and spectroscopy of the low Galactic latitude globular cluster 2MASS-GC03
• Time-Series Surveys and Pulsating Stars: The Near-Infrared Perspective
• Interstellar Extinction Law toward the Galactic Center IV: J, H, and Ks Bands from VVV Red Clump Stars
• Hidden power of near-infrared data for the study of young clusters: Illustrative case of RCW 38
• Variable Stars in M31 Stellar Clusters from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury