Extinction, the elephant in the room that hinders optical Galactic observations

Abstract

Extinction is the elephant in the room that almost everyone tries to avoid when analyzing optical/IR data: astronomers tend to find a quick fix for it that the referee will accept, but that does not mean such a solution is correct or even optimal. In this contribution I address three important issues related to extinction that are commonly ignored and present current and future solutions for them: [1] Extinction produces non-linear photometric effects, [2] the extinction law changes between sightlines, and [3] not all families of extinction laws have the same accuracy.

38 pages, 15 figures. To appear in the edition of the Central European Astrophysical Bulletin dedicated to the proceedings of the Hvar Stellar Meeting 2023

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