Longitudinal profile for three ranges of latitude as mentioned in the legend. Upper left panel: star counts (for the observed counts up to K_s = 13.5 mag) for magnitude corrected by extinction effects; upper right panel: relative difference between counts with and without extinction correction. Lower left panel: averaged extinction predicted by González et al. (2012) and Marshall et al. (2006) interstellar extinction model, for Galactic longitudes: −10° < ℓ < 0° and −20° < ℓ < −10°, respectively; lower right panel: averaged extinction predicted by Nidever et al. (2012). In figures, we have considered a median within one degree in longitude.