Issue |
A&A
Volume 644, December 2020
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A140 | |
Number of page(s) | 11 | |
Section | Galactic structure, stellar clusters and populations | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038346 | |
Published online | 10 December 2020 |
Mapping the stellar age of the Milky Way bulge with the VVV
III. High-resolution reddening map⋆,⋆⋆,⋆⋆⋆
1
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
e-mail: frsurot@uc.cl
2
Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205 La Laguna Tenerife, Spain
3
European Southern Observatory, Karl Schwarzschild-Straße 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
4
Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, Boltzmann-Straße 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
5
UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, UK
6
Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile
7
Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, 782-0436 Macul, Santiago, Chile
8
Departamento de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Andrés Bello, República 220, Santiago, Chile
9
Vatican Observatory, V00120 Vatican City State, Italy
Received:
5
May
2020
Accepted:
21
September
2020
Context. A detailed study of the Galactic bulge stellar population necessarily requires an accurate representation of the interstellar extinction, particularly toward the Galactic plane and center, where severe and differential reddening is expected to vary on sub-arcmin scales. Although recent infrared surveys have addressed this problem by providing extinction maps across the whole Galactic bulge area, dereddened color-magnitude diagrams near the plane and center appear systematically undercorrected, prompting the need for higher resolution. These undercorrections affect any stellar study sensitive to color (e.g., star formation history analyses via color-magnitude diagram fitting), either making them inaccurate or limiting them to small and relatively stable extinction windows where this value is low and better constrained.
Aims. This study is aimed at providing a high-resolution (2 arcmin to ∼10 arcsec) color excess map for the VVV bulge area in J − Ks color.
Methods. We used the MW-BULGE-PSFPHOT catalogs, sampling ∼300 deg2 across the Galactic bulge (|l| < 10° and −10° < b < 5°) to isolate a sample of red clump and red giant branch stars, for which we calculated the average J − Ks color in a fine spatial grid in (l, b) space.
Results. We obtained an E(J − Ks) map spanning the VVV bulge area of roughly 300 deg2, with the equivalent of a resolution between ∼1 arcmin for bulge outskirts (l < 6°) to below 20 arcsec within the central |l| < 1°, and below 10 arcsec for the innermost area (|l| < 1° and |b| < 3°).
Key words: Galaxy: structure / Galaxy: bulge
The map is only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/644/A140
Based on observations taken within the ESO VISTA Public Survey VVV, Program ID 179.B-2002 (PI: Minniti, Lucas).
The result is publicly available at http://basti-iac.oa-teramo.inaf.it/vvvexmap/
© ESO 2020
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