NEW OPTICAL REDDENING MAPS OF THE LARGE AND SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUDS

By R. Haschke, E. Grebel, S. Duffau. 2011

164 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present new reddening maps of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) based on the data of the third phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE III). We have used two different methods to derive optical reddening maps. We adopt a theoretical mean unreddened color for the red clump (RC) in the SMC and LMC, respectively. We subdivide the photometric data for both Clouds into subfields and calculate the difference between the observed RC position and the theoretical value for each field, which provides us with the reddening value in (V − I). Furthermore, reddening values are obtained for 13490 LMC RR Lyrae ab and 1529 SMC RR Lyrae ab stars covering the whole OGLE III region of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs). The observed colors (V − I) of the RR Lyrae stars are compared with the color from the absolute magnitudes. The absolute magnitude of each RR Lyrae star is computed using its period and metallicity derived from Fourier decomposition of its light curve. In general, we find a low and uniform reddening distribution in both MCs. The RC method indicates a mean reddening of the LMC of E(V − I) = 0.09 ± 0.07 mag, while for the SMC E(V − I) = 0.04 ± 0.06 mag is obtained. With RR Lyrae stars a median value of E(V − I) = 0.11 ± 0.06 mag for the LMC and E(V − I) = 0.07 ± 0.06 mag for the SMC is found. The LMC shows very low reddening in the bar region, whereas the reddening in the star-forming leading edge and 30 Doradus is considerably higher. In the SMC, three pronounced regions with higher reddening are visible. Two are located along the bar, while the highest reddening is found in the star-forming wing of the SMC. In general, the regions with higher reddening are in good spatial agreement with infrared reddening maps as well as with reddening estimations of other studies. The position-dependent reddening values from the RC method are available via the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory interface.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1d264fb7edc4ff8e2e1d7dc3f8c4a46bbe6ea417

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Leroy
2. A. Bolatto
3. Mark R. Krumholz
4. W. Hamann
5. H. Todt
6. E. Ostriker
7. A. Liermann
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In Instrumentation

1. W. Hamann
2. H. Todt
3. A. Liermann
4. A. Bolatto
5. G. Gräfener
6. L. Oskinova
7. A. Leroy
8. W. Freedman

Citations in the corpus

• The Wolf-Rayet stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud - A comprehensive analysis of the WN class (2014, background): “Another advantage in analyzing stars of the LMC is the marginal reddening along the line of sight (Subramaniam 2005; Haschke et al. 2011), which is in general below Eb−v = 0.25 mag (Larsen et al. 2000).”
• THE STATE OF THE GAS AND THE RELATION BETWEEN GAS AND STAR FORMATION AT LOW METALLICITY: THE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD (2011, background): “The map shows very good correspondence with the recent optical reddening maps from Haschke et al. (2011).”
• THE ARAUCARIA PROJECT. THE DISTANCE TO THE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD FROM LATE-TYPE ECLIPSING BINARIES (2013, unknown): “First, we utilized Magellanic Cloud reddening maps published by Haschke et al. (2011).”
• Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (2003, methodology): “Y19 argue that the extinction estimates from Haschke et al. (2011) are the best available estimate of the LMC reddening.”