500-μm brightness values (all the points) as a function of Galactic latitude in the longitude interval 14.̊5 ≤ l ≤ 15.̊5 from the map in Fig. 1b. (This longitude range contains M16, which is clearly visible as the large bump at b ~ −0.̊7.) The red thick line is the 7th-order polynomial fit to all points, and the red points are those that are clipped away because they lie above 3 times the rms of the residuals (after subtracting the fit). The green thick line is the 5th-order polynomial fit to all points that survived this clipping (all the black points). The thick crosses indicate the positions of the maxima of each respective fit.