A New Galactic Extinction Map of the Cygnus Region

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-resolution Galactic extinction map of the Cygnus region using IRAS data, revealing detailed spatial variations in dust temperature and extinction, and surpassing previous lower-resolution maps.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel method to produce 5' resolution extinction maps from IRAS data, improving spatial detail over prior COBE/DIRBE-based maps.

Findings

Dust temperature varies significantly on 5' scales.

The extinction (Av) ranges from 0.5 to 11 mag.

The method can be applied to create all-sky extinction maps.

Abstract

We have made a Galactic extinction map of the Cygnus region with 5' spatial resolution. The selected area is 80^\circ to 90^\circ in the Galactic longitude and -4^\circ to 8^\circ in the Galactic latitude. The intensity at 140 \mum is derived from the intensities at 60 and 100 \mum of the IRAS data using the tight correlation between 60, 100, and 140 \mum found in the Galactic plane. The dust temperature and optical depth are calculated with 5' resolution from the 140 and 100 \mum intensity, and Av is calculated from the optical depth. In the selected area, the mean dust temperature is 17 K, the minimum is 16 K, and the maximum is 30 K. The mean Av is 6.5 mag, the minimum is 0.5 mag, and the maximum is 11 mag. The dust temperature distribution shows significant spatial variation on smaller scales down to 5'. Because the present study can trace the 5'-scale spatial variation of the extinction, it has an advantage over the previous studies, such as the one by Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis, who used the COBE/DIRBE data to derive the dust temperature distribution with a spatial resolution of 1^\circ. The difference of Av between our map and Schlegel et al.'s is \pm 3 mag. A new extinction map of the entire sky can be produced by applying the present method.