Modelling the Galactic Interstellar Extinction Distribution in Three Dimensions

By D. Marshall, Annie Robin, Céline Reylé, M. Schultheis, S. Picaud. 2005

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Aims. The Two Micron All Sky Survey, along with the Stellar Population Synthesis Model of the Galaxy, developed in Besancon, is used to calculate the extinction distribution along different lines of sight. By combining many lines of sight, the large scale distribution of interstellar material can be deduced. Methods. The Galaxy model is used to provide the intrinsic colour of stars and their probable distances, so that the near infrared colour excess, and hence the extinction, may be calculated and its distance evaluated. Such a technique is dependent on the model used, however we are able to show that moderate changes in the model parameters result in insignificant changes in the predicted extinction. Results. This technique has now been applied to over 64 000 lines of sight, each separated by 15´, in the inner Galaxy ($|l|\le$ 100°, $|b|\le$ 10°). We have projected our three dimensional results onto a two dimensional plane in order to compare them with existing two dimensional extinction maps and CO surveys. We find that although differences exist due to the different methods used or the medium traced, the same large scale structures are visible in each of the different maps. Using our extinction map, we have derived the main characteristics of the large scale structure of the dust distribution. The scale height of the interstellar matter is found to be $125^{+17}_{-7}$ pc. The dust distribution is found to be asymmetrically warped, in agreement with CO and HI observations of the ISM. However, the slope of the dust warp and the galactocentric distance where it starts are found to be smaller than the values measured for the external HI disc: for positive longitudes the angle is $\theta=$ $89\degr$, it starts at 8.7 kpc from the Galactic center and grows with a slope of 0.14, while at negative longitudes, the angle of the maximum is at $\theta=$ $272\degr$, the starting radius 7.8 kpc and the slope 0.11. Finally, the presence of dust is detected in the Galactic bulge. It forms an elongated structure approximately 5.2 kpc long and lies at an angle of 30 ± $5\degr$ with respect to the Sun-Galactic centre direction. This may be interpreted as a dust lane along the Galactic bar. This resulting extinction map will be useful for studies of the inner Galaxy and its stellar populations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/42b7a12ce338f107c45213599d8ed2f98d78974e

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Citations in the corpus

3D maps of the local ISM from inversion of individual color excess measurements (2013, background): “…they can be based on individual stellar reddening values based on photometric or spectrophotometric measurements and appropriate calibrations (see Marshall et al.(2006), Marshall et al.(2009), Sale & Drew(2010), Gontcharov(2012), Chen et al.(2013), Knude(2010), Cambrésy et al.(2011), Reis et…”
THE STELLAR POPULATION STRUCTURE OF THE GALACTIC DISK (2015, methodology): “In our density-fitting methodology (see § 3 below) we correct for the effects of interstellar extinction using the 3D extinction maps of Marshall et al. (2006) in the inner-disk plane and Green et al. (2015) elsewhere (using AH/AKs = 1.48 and AH/E(B − V ) = 0.46; Schlafly & Finkbeiner 2011; Yuan et…”
Painting a portrait of the Galactic disc with its stellar clusters (2020, background): “The warp is also visible in the distribution of molecular clouds (Wouterloot et al. 1990), dust (Marshall et al. 2006), stars (López-Corredoira et al. 2002; Moitinho et al. 2006; Vázquez et al. 2008; Reylé et al. 2009; Amôres et al. 2017; Chrobakova et al. 2020), and stellar kinematics (Poggio et…”
Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust within 3 kpc (2019, methodology): “Later on, maps of radial profiles and their derivatives, i.e. reddening or extinction per unit distance, were built by Marshall et al. (2006), Chen et al. (2013) and Schultheis et al. (2014) based on the Besançon model of stellar population synthesis (Robin et al. 2012) and 2MASS, GLIMPSE and VVV…”
A 3D Dust Map Based on Gaia, Pan-STARRS 1, and 2MASS (2019, methodology): “Marshall et al. (2006) use near-infrared colors of post-main-sequence stars in the Two Micron All Sky Survey (Skrutskie et al. 2006, hereafter “2MASS”) to map dust in 3D, while Berry et al. (2012) use the optical and near-infrared colors of stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (York et al. 2000).”
Constraining the thick disc formation scenario of the Milky Way (2014, unknown): “We first considered the Marshall et al. (2006) 3D extinction map, but only one field can be treated this way because their map does not explore latitudes higher than 10◦ in absolute value.”
LIFTING THE DUSTY VEIL WITH NEAR- AND MID-INFRARED PHOTOMETRY. I. DESCRIPTION AND APPLICATIONS OF THE RAYLEIGH–JEANS COLOR EXCESS METHOD (2011, methodology): “We note that this approach to making 3-dimensional dust maps does not rely on assumed Galactic models, as has been done in previous approaches to this problem (e.g., Marshall et al. 2006).”
A CATALOG OF X-RAY POINT SOURCES FROM TWO MEGASECONDS OF CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER (2008, background): “Most of these should lie within 4 kpc of Earth (e.g., Marshall et al. 2006).”
Stellar populations in the Milky Way bulge region: towards solving the Galactic bulge and bar shapes using 2MASS data (2011, methodology): “The data are used in three ways: (i) for determining the extinction using the method from Marshall et al (2006), (ii) for fitting bulge model parameters on a selection of windows, (iii) for comparing the whole bulge region with the fitted model and checking the extinction distribution again.”
Galactic reddening in 3D from stellar photometry – an improved map (2018, methodology): “In the past decade, work has progressed on mapping dust in 3D. Marshall et al. (2006) computed a three-dimensional map of dust reddening, using post-main sequence stars observed by the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (Skrutskie et al. 2006, 2MASS) as tracers of the dust.”
The Fermi Galactic Center GeV Excess and Implications for Dark Matter (2017, methodology): “Marshall et al. (2006) proposed a method that combined infrared surveys with stellar population synthesis models to derive the distribution of dust in 3D.”
LINE DERIVED INFRARED EXTINCTION TOWARD THE GALACTIC CENTER (2011, background): “The extinction towards the GC is higher than the average extinction of the bulge behind the Galactic plane (Marshall et al. 2006).”
The Youngest Galactic Supernova Remnant: G1.9+0.3 (2008, background): “In fact, the Galactic extinction model of Marshall et al. (2006) based on near-infrared 2MASS extinction colors gives an infrared absorption of magA p 1.8Ks at the GC distance and .”
Local stellar kinematics from RAVE data - I. Local standard of rest (2010, background): “H is the scaleheight for the interstellar dust which is adopted as 125 pc (Marshall et al. 2006) and A∞(b) and Ad(b) are the total absorptions for the model and for the distance to the star, respectively.”
The VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS (2014, methodology): “…possible to exploit the stellar photometry adaptively to solve for the distribution of both the stars and dust making up the optically accessible Galactic disc – by means that are similar to those already attempted, based on the NIR 2MASS survey (Drimmel & Spergel 2001; Marshall et al. 2006).”
A THREE-DIMENSIONAL MAP OF MILKY WAY DUST (2015, methodology): “Marshall et al. (2006) developed a method that iteratively improves distance and reddening estimates to post-main sequence stars, updating the dust column in each distance bin with each iteration so that the intrinsic stellar colors match those predicted by the Besançon model of the Galactic…”