Left panel: from left to right for the 19 field directions, colored according to the Galactic latitude, and as a function of distance: (i) estimated gas column between the Sun and 300 pc from integration in the local reddening maps, (ii) gas columns estimated from Green et al. (2015) Pan-STARRS color excess measurements up to four distances, and (iii) gas columns estimated from Planck τ-353GHz reddening measurements. See the text and Fig. 10 for the Pan-STARRS reddening scaling. All the reddening values are converted into N(H) using N(H) = 4. × 10²¹ cm^-2 mag^-1, the central value of Fig. 10. Right panel: soft X-ray absorbing column N_Habs deduced from global fitting of XMM spectra with fixed NPS flux. The vertical scale is the same as in the left panel.