Three-dimensional extinction mapping and selection effects

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to accurately map three-dimensional interstellar extinction by explicitly modeling selection effects as a Poisson point process, ensuring unbiased estimates from magnitude-limited astronomical catalogues.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework that explicitly accounts for selection effects in 3D extinction mapping using Poisson point processes, improving accuracy.

Findings

Method effectively corrects for selection biases in extinction maps

Framework enables unbiased 3D extinction estimation from magnitude-limited data

Poisson point process approach simplifies likelihood normalization

Abstract

Selection effects can bedevil the inference of the properties of a population of astronomical catalogues, unavoidably biasing the observed catalogue. This is particularly true when mapping interstellar extinction in three dimensions: more extinguished stars are fainter and so generally less likely to appear in any magnitude limited catalogue of observations. This paper demonstrates how to account for this selection effect when mapping extinction, so that accurate and unbiased estimates of the true extinction are obtained. We advocate couching the description of the problem explicitly as a Poisson point process, which allows the likelihoods employed to be easily and correctly normalised in such a way that accounts for the selection functions applied to construct the catalogue of observations.