Related papers: Interstellar extinction towards open clusters and …

We present a 127deg x 63deg extinction map of the Anticenter of the Galaxy, based on <J-H> and <H-K> colour excess maps from 2MASS. This 8001 square degree map with a resolution of 4 arcminutes is provided as online material. The colour…

We chart the expected Galactic distribution of neutron stars and black holes. These compact remnants of dead stars -- the Galactic underworld -- are found to exhibit a fundamentally different distribution and structure to the visible…

Galactic extinction is tested using galaxy number counts at low Galactic latitude obtained from five band photometry of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The spatial variation of galaxy number counts for low extinction regions of $E(B-V) <…

Determining star cluster distances is essential to analyse their properties and distribution in the Galaxy. In particular it is desirable to have a reliable, purely photometric distance estimation method for large samples of newly…

An automated search for star clusters close to the Galactic plane (|b| < 5 deg) was carried out on the Point Source Catalogue of the DENIS survey. 44% of the Galactic plane have been observed and calibrated. The method allowed to retrieve…

We have investigated the interstellar reddening law of young open clusters within 3kpc from the Sun using optical, near-IR 2MASS, and Spitzer IRAC data. The total-to-selective extinction ratio Rv of 162 young open clusters (log t{age} <=…

Estimates of the cosmic star formation rate and of cluster metallicities independently imply that at z < 0.5 the gas in the universe has substantial average metallicity: 1/10 < Z/Z_solar < 1/3 for Omega_gas = 0.05. This metal density…

We describe the use of partially overlapping galaxies to provide direct measurements of the effective absorption in galaxy disks, independent of assumptions about internal disk structure. The non-overlapping parts of the galaxies and…

To explain the nature of the high reddening (Av~10 mag) towards one of the most luminous stars in the Galaxy - Cyg OB2 #12 (B5 Ia-0), also known as MT304, we carried out spectro-photometric observations of 24 stars located in its vicinity.…

Garzon et al. (1997), Lopez-Corredoira et al. (1999) and Hammersley et al. (2000) have identified in TMGS and DENIS data a large excess of stars at l=27 deg and b=0 deg which might correspond to an in-plane bar. We compared near infrared…

3D maps of the extinction density in the Galaxy can be built through the inversion of catalogues of distance-extinction pairs for individual target stars. The spatial resolution of the maps that can be achieved increases with the spatial…

The vast majority of Gaia DR1 Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS) stars are located within a distance of 1200 pc from the Sun and up to 600 pc within the Galactic plane. Complete usage of their parallaxes is possible only if their…

We have pursued two different methods to analyze the old stellar population near the Galactic plane, using data from the 2MASS survey. The first method is based on the isolation of the red clump giant population in the color-magnitude…

In most studies of dust in galaxies, dust is only detected from its emission to approximately the optical radius of the galaxy. By combining the signal of 110 spiral galaxies observed as part of the Herschel Reference Survey, we are able to…

We investigate the distribution of the interstellar dust towards six small volumes of the sky in the region of the Gum nebula. New high-quality four-colour uvby and H\beta\ Str\"omgren photometry obtained for 352 stars in six selected areas…

Diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) are weak absorption features of interstellar origin present in the optical and infrared spectra of stars. Their use as a tool to trace the structure of the Galactic ISM is gaining relevance in the recent…

AIMS. We calculate the stellar density using star counts obtained from Gaia DR2 up to a Galactocentric distance R=20 kpc with a deconvolution technique for the parallax errors. Then we analyse the density in order to study the structure of…

Infrared photometry in the J (1.2 microns), H (1.7 microns), Ks (2.2 microns) bands from the 2MASS catalogue and in the W1 (3.4 microns), W2 (4.6 microns), W3 (12 microns), W4 (22 microns) bands from the WISE catalogue is used to reveal the…

We report a search for the presence of dust in the intra-cluster medium based on the study of statistical reddening of background galaxies. Armed with the Red Sequence Cluster survey data, from which we extracted (i) a catalog of 458…

The review contains an analysis of the observed and model curves of the interstellar extinction and polarization. The observations mainly give information on dust in diffuse and translucent interstellar clouds. The features of various dust…