Mapping the stellar age of the Milky Way bulge with the VVV. III. High resolution reddening map

Abstract

The detailed study of the Galactic bulge stellar population necessarily requires an accurate representation of the interstellar extinction particularly toward the Galactic plane and center, where the severe and differential reddening is expected to vary on sub-arcmin scales. Although recent infrared surveys have addressed this problem by providing extinction maps across the whole Galactic bulge area, dereddened color-magnitude diagrams near the plane and center appear systematically undercorrected, suggesting the need for higher resolutions. These undercorrections affect any stellar study sensitive to color (e.g. star formation history analysis via color-magnitude diagram fitting), either making them inaccurate or limiting them to small low/stable extinction windows where this value is better constrained. We aim at providing a high-resolution (2 arcmin to $\sim$ 10 arcsec) color excess map for the VVV bulge area, in $\mathrm{J}-{\mathrm{K}}_s$ color. We use the MW-BULGE-PSFPHOT catalogs sampling $\sim$ 300 deg${}^2$ across the Galactic bulge ($|l|<10^{\circ }$ and $-10^{\circ }<b<5^{\circ }$) to isolate a sample of red clump and red giant branch stars, for which we calculate average $\mathrm{J}-{\mathrm{K}}_s$ color in a fine spatial grid in $(l,b)$ space. We obtain a E$(\mathrm{J}-{\mathrm{K}}_s)$ map spanning the VVV bulge area of roughly 300 deg${}^2$, with the equivalent to a resolution between $\sim$ 1 arcmin for bulge outskirts ($l<-6^{\circ }$) to below 20 arcsec within the central $|l|<1^{\circ }$, and below 10 arcsec for the innermost area ($|l|<1^{\circ }$ and $|b|<3^{\circ }$). The result is publicly available at http://basti-iac.oa-teramo.inaf.it/vvvexmap/

11 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for publication on A&A. Map accessible through http://basti-iac.oa-teramo.inaf.it/vvvexmap/

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• The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS)
• The GIRAFFE Inner Bulge Survey (GIBS) III. Metallicity distributions and kinematics of 26 Galactic bulge fields
• Milky Way demographics with the VVV survey. I. The 84-million star colour-magnitude diagram of the Galactic bulge
• The complex, variable near infrared extinction towards the Nuclear Bulge
• Interstellar Extinction and Long-Period Variables in the Galactic Center
• Mapping the stellar age of the Milky Way bulge with the VVV. I. The method
• VVV WIN 1733$-$3349: a low extinction window to probe the far side of the Milky Way bulge

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• Hidden in the Haystack: Low-luminosity globular clusters towards the Milky Way bulge
• The extinction law in the inner $3\times 3$ deg${}^2$ of the Milky Way and the red clump absolute magnitude in the inner bar-bulge
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• The diffuse interstellar band around 8620 Å I. Methods and application to the GIBS data set
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• A Deep, High-Angular Resolution 3D Dust Map of the Southern Galactic Plane
• An Intriguing Globular Cluster in the Galactic Bulge from the VVV Survey
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• Astrometry in crowded fields towards the Galactic Bulge
• FSR 1776: a new globular cluster in the Galactic bulge?
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• APOGEE view of the globular cluster NGC 6544
• Unveiling MOA-2007-BLG-192: An M Dwarf Hosting a Likely Super-Earth
• Dust extinction map of the Galactic plane based on the VVV survey data
• The Galactic Bulge exploration IV.: RR~Lyrae stars as traces of the Galactic bar -- 3D and 5D analysis, extinction variation
• VVV catalog of ab-type RR Lyrae in the inner Galactic bulge
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• MOA-2010-BLG-328: Keck and HST Expose the Limits of Occams Razor in Microlensing
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• A Near-Infrared Extinction and Reddening Map Towards the Galactic Bulge Using UKIRT
• Confirmation Of Two New Galactic Bulge Globular Clusters: FSR 19 and FSR 25