Issue |
A&A
Volume 550, February 2013
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A80 | |
Number of page(s) | 10 | |
Section | Interstellar and circumstellar matter | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201220587 | |
Published online | 30 January 2013 |
Calibrating Milky Way dust extinction using cosmological sources
1
Department of PhysicsStockholm University, AlbaNova University
Center,
10691
Stockholm,
Sweden
e-mail: edvard@fysik.su.se
2
The Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics, Stockholm
University, 10691
Stockholm,
Sweden
Received:
18
October
2012
Accepted:
13
December
2012
We constrain the light extinction properties of Milky Way dust. We investigated the correlations between dust column density as inferred from infrared data and the observed colours of celestial objects at cosmological distances with low levels of colour dispersion. Results derived using colours of quasars, brightest central galaxies, and luminous red galaxies are broadly consistent, indicating a proportionality constant between the reddening E(B − V) ≡ AB − AV and the dust column density DT (given in units of MJy/sr) of p = E(B − V)/DT ~ 0.02 and a reddening parameter RV ≡ AV/E(B − V) ~ 3 with fractional uncertainties of approximately 10%. The data do not provide any evidence for spatial variations in the dust properties, except for a possible hint of scatter in the dust extinction properties at the longest optical wavelengths.
Key words: dust, extinction / Galaxy: general
© ESO, 2013
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