English

A Color-locus Method for Mapping $R_V$ Using Ensembles of Stars

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2018-03-28 v1

Abstract

We present a simple but effective technique for measuring angular variation in RVR_V across the sky. We divide stars from the Pan-STARRS1 catalog into Healpix pixels and determine the posterior distribution of reddening and RVR_V for each pixel using two independent Monte Carlo methods. We find the two methods to be self-consistent in the limits where they are expected to perform similarly. We also find some agreement with high-precision photometric studies of RVR_V in Perseus and Ophiuchus, as well as with a map of reddening near the Galactic plane based on stellar spectra from APOGEE. While current studies of RVR_V are mostly limited to isolated clouds, we have developed a systematic method for comparing RVR_V values for the majority of observable dust. This is a proof of concept for a more rigorous Galactic reddening map.x

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.09072,
  title  = {A Color-locus Method for Mapping $R_V$ Using Ensembles of Stars},
  author = {Albert Lee and Gregory M. Green and Edward F. Schlafly and Douglas P. Finkbeiner and William Burgett and Ken Chambers and Heather Flewelling and Klaus Hodapp and Nick Kaiser and Rolf-Peter Kudritzki and Eugene Magnier and Nigel Metcalfe and Richard Wainscoat and Christopher Waters},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.09072},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

21 pages, 20 figures