The Interstellar Extinction Toward the Milky Way Bulge with Planetary Nebulae, Red Clump, and RR Lyrae stars

Abstract

I review the literature covering the issue of interstellar extinction toward the Milky Way bulge, with emphasis placed on findings from planetary nebulae, RR Lyrae, and red clump stars. I also report on observations from HI gas and globular clusters. I show that there has been substantial progress in this field in recent decades, most particularly from red clump stars. The spatial coverage of extinction maps has increased by a factor $\sim 100\times$ in the past twenty years, and the total-to-selective extinction ratios reported have shifted by $\sim$20-25\%, indicative of the improved accuracy and separately, of a steeper-than-standard extinction curve. Problems remain in modelling differential extinction, explaining anomalies involving the planetary nebulae, and understanding the difference between bulge extinction coefficients and "standard" literature values.

arXiv comment12 pages, 6 figures, 2 Tables, invited article to PASA special review issue on the Galactic Bulge, edited by Beatriz Barbuy. This version includes minor modifications requested by referee prior to being accepted for publication

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• OGLE-2011-BLG-0462: An Isolated Stellar-Mass Black Hole Confirmed Using New HST Astrometry and Updated Photometry
• Search for continuous gravitational wave signals from luminous dark photon superradiance clouds with LVK O3 observations
• New classical Cepheids in the inner part of the northern Galactic disk and their kinematics