Related papers: Mapping the interstellar dust with near-infrared o…
With current wide-field near-infrared (NIR) instruments the scattered light in the near-infrared can be mapped over large areas. Below A_V ~ 10 the surface brightness is directly proportional to the column density, and at slightly higher…
Extinction remains one of the most reliable methods of measuring column density of nearby Galactic interstellar clouds. The current and ongoing near-infrared surveys enable the mapping of extinction over large sky areas. We produce allsky…
Dust plays a critical role in the study of the interstellar medium (ISM). Extinction maps derived from optical surveys often fail to capture regions with high column density due to the limited photometric depth in optical wavelengths. To…
Several methods exist to convert near-infrared (NIR) stellar observations into extinction maps. We present a new method based on NIR multiband observations. The method uses a discretised version of the distribution of intrinsic stellar…
In this paper we present XNICER, an optimized multi-band extinction technique based on the extreme deconvolution of the intrinsic colors of objects observed through a molecular cloud. XNICER follows a rigorous statistical approach and…
We consider from a general point of view the problem of determining the extinction in dense molecular clouds. We use a rigorous statistical approach to characterize the properties of the most widely used optical and infrared techniques,…
Mapping of near-infrared (NIR) scattered light is a recent method for the study of interstellar clouds, complementing other, more commonly used methods, like dust emission and extinction. Our goal is to study the usability of this method on…
Context: Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) harbor progenitors of high-mass stars. Little is known of the parental molecular clouds of the IRDCs. Aims: We demonstrate the feasibility of the near-infrared (NIR) dust extinction mapping in tracing…
Sub-millimetre dust emission is often used to derive the column density N of dense interstellar clouds. The observations consist of data at several wavelengths but of variable resolution. We examine two procedures that been proposed for the…
We discuss the possibility of mapping interstellar clouds at unprecedentedly high spatial resolution by means of near-IR imaging of their scattered light. We calculate the scattering of the interstellar radiation field by a cloud model…
We use the COMPLETE Survey's observations of the Perseus star-forming region to assess and intercompare three methods for measuring column density in molecular clouds: extinction mapping (NIR); thermal emission mapping (FIR); and mapping…
Sub-millimetre dust emission is an important tracer of density N of dense interstellar clouds. One has to combine surface brightness information at different spatial resolutions, and specific methods are needed to derive N at a resolution…
Measuring the mass distribution of infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) over the wide dynamic range of their column densities is a fundamental obstacle in determining the initial conditions of high-mass star formation and star cluster formation. We…
Observational data and theoretical calculations show that significant small-scale substructures are present in dark molecular clouds. These inhomogeneities can provide precious hints on the physical conditions inside the clouds, but can…
Dust extinction is one of the most reliable tracers of the gas distribution in the Milky Way. The near-infrared (NIR) Vista Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey enables extinction mapping based on stellar photometry over a large area in…
Interstellar dust extinction curves provide valuable information about dust properties, including the composition and size of the dust grains, and are essential to correct observations for the effects of interstellar dust. In this work, we…
Dust extinction is the most robust tracer of the gas distribution in the interstellar medium, but measuring extinction is limited by the systematic uncertainties involved in estimating the intrinsic colors to background stars. In this paper…
(Abridged) We use 8 micron Spitzer GLIMPSE images to make extinction maps of 10 IRDCs, selected to be relatively nearby and massive. The extinction mapping technique requires modeling the IR background intensity behind the cloud, which is…
We present a 8 deg x 6 deg, high resolution extinction map of the Pipe nebula using 4.5 million stars from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) point source catalog. The use of NICER, a robust and optimal technique to map the dust column…
We are studying the column density distribution of all nearby giant molecular clouds. As part of this project we generated several all sky extinction maps. They are calculated using the median near infrared colour excess technique applied…