Three-dimensional maps of interstellar dust in the Local Arm: using Gaia, 2MASS, and APOGEE-DR14

By R. Lallement, L. Capitanio, L. Ruiz-Dern, C. Danielski, C. Babusiaux, Jean-Luc Vergely, M. Elyajouri, Frédéric Arenou, N.Leclerc. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2018

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. Gaia data and stellar surveys open the way to the construction of detailed 3D maps of the Galactic interstellar (IS) dust based on the synthesis of star distances and extinctions. Dust maps are tools of broad use, also for Gaia-related Milky Way studies. Aims. Reliable extinction measurements require very accurate photometric calibrations. We show the first step of an iterative process linking 3D dust maps and photometric calibrations, and improving them simultaneously. Methods. Our previous 3D map of nearby IS dust was used to select low-reddening SDSS/APOGEE-DR14 red giants, and this database served for an empirical effective temperature- and metallicity-dependent photometric calibration in the Gaia G and 2MASS Ks bands. This calibration has been combined with Gaia G-band empirical extinction coefficients recently published, G, J, and Ks photometry and APOGEE atmospheric parameters to derive the extinction of a large fraction of the survey targets. Distances were estimated independently using isochrones and the magnitude-independent extinction KJ−Ks. This new dataset has been merged with the one used for the earlier version of dust map. A new Bayesian inversion of distance-extinction pairs has been performed to produce an updated 3D map. Results. We present several properties of the new map. A comparison with 2D dust emission reveals that all large dust shells seen in emission at middle and high latitudes are closer than 300 pc. The updated distribution constrains the well-debated, X-ray bright North Polar Spur to originate beyond 800 pc. We use the Orion region to illustrate additional details and distant clouds. On the large scale the map reveals a complex structure of the Local Arm. Chains of clouds of 2–3 kpc in length appear in planes tilted by ≃15° with respect to the Galactic plane. A series of cavities oriented along a l ≃ 60–240° axis crosses the Arm. Conclusions. The results illustrate the ongoing synergy between 3D mapping of IS dust and stellar calibrations in the context of Gaia. Dust maps provide prior foregrounds for future calibrations appropriate to different target characteristics or ranges of extinction, allowing us in turn to increase extinction data and produce more detailed and extended maps.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d051c594709aecf696f2ee3265d4233c641b38fc

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Citations in the corpus

Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust within 3 kpc (2019, methodology): “The present hierarchical inversion has suppressed or at least strongly attenuated what was the main limitation of our full 3D mapping technique (used recently by Capitanio et al. (2017); Lallement et al. (2018)), namely the use of a unique correlation length.”
Photo-astrometric distances, extinctions, and astrophysical parameters for Gaia DR2 stars brighter than G = 18 (2019, background): “21; Lallement et al. 2018, Fig.”
In Disguise or Out of Reach: First Clues about In Situ and Accreted Stars in the Stellar Halo of the Milky Way from Gaia DR2 (2018, methodology): “We adopt the interstellar reddening estimates from the map of Lallement et al. (2018), which is well adapted for stars nearer than 1 kpc. Fig.”