A Correction to the Standard Galactic Reddening Map: Passive Galaxies as Standard Crayons
J. E. G. Peek, Genevieve J. Graves

TL;DR
This study refines the Galactic reddening map by using passively evolving galaxies as standards to identify deviations from the SFD98 map, revealing localized inaccuracies linked to dust temperature.
Contribution
Introduces the 'standard crayon' method employing passive galaxies to correct and improve the accuracy of the SFD98 reddening map.
Findings
Most of the SFD98 map deviations are below 3 millimagnitudes E(B-V).
Deviations up to 50% in some regions, correlated with dust temperature.
Corrected maps are publicly available for community use.
Abstract
We present corrections to the Schlegel, Finkbeiner, Davis (SFD98) reddening maps over the Sloan Digital Sky Survey northern Galactic cap area. To find these corrections, we employ what we dub the "standard crayon" method, in which we use passively evolving galaxies as color standards by which to measure deviations from the reddening map. We select these passively evolving galaxies spectroscopically, using limits on the H alpha and O II equivalent widths to remove all star-forming galaxies from the SDSS main galaxy catalog. We find that by correcting for known reddening, redshift, color-magnitude relation, and variation of color with environmental density, we can reduce the scatter in color to below 3% in the bulk of the 151,637 galaxies we select. Using these galaxies we construct maps of the deviation from the SFD98 reddening map at 4.5 degree resolution, with 1-sigma error of ~ 1.5…
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Taxonomy
TopicsRemote Sensing in Agriculture · Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
