Variations of the Interstellar Extinction Law within the Nearest Kiloparsec

TL;DR

This study maps how the interstellar extinction law varies within 500 parsecs of the Sun, revealing significant regional differences in dust properties that impact astronomical distance measurements.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed large-scale mapping of $R_V$ variations within the nearest kiloparsec, highlighting spatial patterns and their implications for interstellar dust properties.

Findings

$R_V$ varies from 2.2 to 4.4 across the local space.

Maximum $R_V$ occurs at high Galactic latitudes and near the Galactic center.

Ignoring $R_V$ variations can cause distance errors up to 10%.

Abstract

Multicolor photometry from the Tycho-2 and 2MASS catalogues for 11 990 OB and 30 671 K-type red giant branch stars is used to detect systematic large-scale variations of the interstellar extinction law within the nearest kiloparsec. The characteristic of the extinction law, the total-to-selective extinction ratio $R_V$, which also characterizes the size and other properties of interstellar dust grains, has been calculated for various regions of space by the extinction law extrapolation method. The results for the two classes of stars agree: the standard deviation of the "red giants minus OB" $R_V$ differences within 500 pc of the Sun is 0.2. The detected $R_V$ variations between 2.2 and 4.4 not only manifest themselves in individual clouds but also span the entire space near the Sun, following Galactic structures. In the Local Bubble within about 100 pc of the Sun, $R_V$ has a minimum. In the inner part of the Gould Belt and at high Galactic latitudes, at a distance of about 150 pc from the Sun, $R_V$ reaches a maximum and then decreases to its minimum in the outer part of the Belt and other directions at a distance of about 500 pc from the Sun, returning to its mean values far from the Sun. The detected maximum of $R_V$ at high Galactic latitudes is important when allowance is made for the interstellar extinction toward extragalactic objects. In addition, a monotonic increase in $R_V$ by 0.3 per kpc toward the Galactic center has been found near the Galactic equator. It is consistent with the result obtained by Zasowski et al. (2009) for much of the Galaxy. Ignoring the $R_V$ variations and traditionally using a single value for the entire space must lead to systematic errors in the calculated distances reaching 10\%.