3D maps of the local ISM from inversion of individual color excess measurements

By R. Lallement, Jean-Luc Vergely, B. Valette, L. Puspitarini, Laurent Eyer, Luca Casagrande. 2013

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Three-dimensional (3D) maps of the Galactic interstellar matter (ISM) are a potential tool of wide use, however accurate and detailed maps are still lacking. One of the ways to construct the maps is to invert individual distance-limited ISM measurements, a method we have here applied to measurements of stellar color excess in the optical. We have assembled color excess data together with the associated parallax or photometric distances to constitute a catalog of ~ 23,000 sightlines for stars within 2.5 kpc. The photometric data are taken from Stromgren catalogs, the Geneva photometric database, and the Geneva-Copenhagen survey. We also included extinctions derived towards open clusters. We applied, to this color excess dataset, an inversion method based on a regularized Bayesian approach, previously used for mapping at closer distances. We show the dust spatial distribution resulting from the inversion by means of planar cuts through the differential opacity 3D distribution, and by means of 2D maps of the integrated opacity from the Sun up to various distances. The mapping assigns locations to the nearby dense clouds and represents their distribution at the spatial resolution that is allowed by the dataset properties, i.e. of the order of ~10 pc close to the Sun and increasing to ~100 pc beyond 1 kpc. Biases towards nearby and/or weakly extincted stars make this dataset particularly appropriate to map the local and neighboring cavities, and to locate faint, extended nearby clouds, both goals that are difficult or impossible with other mapping methods. The new maps reveal a ~1 kpc wide empty region in the third quadrant in the continuation of the so-called CMa tunnel of the Local Cavity, a cavity that we identify as the Superbubble GSH238+00+09 detected in radio emission maps and that is found to be bounded by the Orion and Vela clouds.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b82cd0c80fb0dea1a28729d514a0339e07332336

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

Three-dimensional mapping of the local interstellar medium with composite data (2017, methodology): “In section 3 we briefly recall the Bayesian technique developed in Vergely et al. (2010) and Lallement et al. (2014) (hereafter LVV) and the changes introduced in the method.”
Photo-astrometric distances, extinctions, and astrophysical parameters for Gaia DR2 stars brighter than G = 18 (2019, background): “…surveys, and also recently from Gaia) has led to a significant improvement of interstellar dust maps within the past years and months (e.g. Lallement et al. 2014, 2018, 2019; Green et al. 2015; Capitanio et al. 2017; Rezaei Kh. et al. 2017, 2018; Yan et al. 2019; Leike & Enßlin 2019; Chen…”
The Nine Lives of Cosmic Rays in Galaxies (2015, background): “They extend over several kpc toward the north and south Galactic poles, assuming a large distance as seems probable given their apparent relation to the Galactic centre and their axis perpendicular to the Galactic plane (the local ISM is dominated by the inclined geometry of the Gould Belt, Lallemen”
A NEW ELECTRON-DENSITY MODEL FOR ESTIMATION OF PULSAR AND FRB DISTANCES (2016, background): “Low densities within 100 pc or so of the Sun are indicated by low interstellar reddening of nearby stars (Reis et al. 2011; Lallement et al. 2014), H I 21 cm spectral-line observations (see Snowden et al. 2015), Na I and Ca II absorption lines in the spectra of nearby early-type stars (e.g., Welsh…”
Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust within 3 kpc (2019, methodology): “…ISM, three-dimensional inversions following a technique developed by Vergely et al. (2001) have been applied to color excesses from ground-based photometry (Vergely et al. 2010; Lallement et al. 2014) or composite sources combining photometry and DIBs (Capitanio et al. 2017; Lallement et al. 2018).”
Stellar and substellar companions of nearby stars from Gaia DR2 (2018, methodology): “For the more distant objects in our extended catalog, we adopted the color excess E(B−V) predicted by the Stilism2 three-dimensional (3D) model of the local interstellar medium (Lallement et al. 2014; Capitanio et al. 2017).”
A 3D Dust Map Based on Gaia, Pan-STARRS 1, and 2MASS (2019, methodology): “Lallement et al. (2014) use catalog distances and reddenings of stars to trace dust, but apply a Gaussian process prior to the spatial distribution of dust, enforcing smoothness on small spatial scales.”
A LARGE CATALOG OF ACCURATE DISTANCES TO MOLECULAR CLOUDS FROM PS1 PHOTOMETRY (2014, background): “Likewise, as suggested by Lallement et al. (2014), there seem to be at least two nearby layers of extinction toward the Galactic center: one at approximately 110 pc and a second at approximately 180 pc.”
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF MOLECULAR CLOUDS FOR THE ENTIRE MILKY WAY DISK (2016, background): “The work of Lallement et al. (2014) clearly shows the position of nearby clouds with respect to the Sun.”
Gaia FGK benchmark stars: Effective temperatures and surface gravities (2015, background): “Also, according to the maps of the local ISM by Lallement et al. (2014), HD 140283 should be located within a local cavity with negligible reddening.”
Galactic reddening in 3D from stellar photometry – an improved map (2018, methodology): “Lallement et al. (2014) compute a 3D map of local interstellar reddening using stellar parallaxes and reddening estimates, with the added assumption that the density of dust is spatially smooth.”