Position of stars of different samples that were used to derive extinction curves towards the LMC. The samples of Nandy et al. (1980, 1981) and Koornneef & Code (1981, yellow circles) were used to construct the curves of Howarth (1983) and Pei (1992). Gordon et al. (2003) split their sample into two and derive a separate curve for each, referring to one sample as LMC2 (LMC SGS 2, blue squares) and the other as ‘LMC Average’ (red diamonds). The green triangle denotes the position of R136. This figure was made with use of the Aladin Sky Atlas (Bonnarel et al. 2000); the background consists of DSS2 colour images.