Three-dimensional dust mapping in the Orion Complex, combining Gaia-TGAS, 2MASS, and WISE

TL;DR

This paper constructs a 3D dust map of the Orion complex using Gaia-TGAS, 2MASS, and WISE data, revealing the cloud's structure and emphasizing the importance of physical constraints in extinction estimation.

Contribution

It introduces a non-parametric method to map 3D dust distribution in Orion, integrating multiple datasets and highlighting the importance of physical constraints over simple colour-based methods.

Findings

The dust map aligns with recent studies on Orion's structure.

The method effectively maps local molecular clouds.

Ignoring physical constraints can lead to inaccurate extinction estimates.

Abstract

We present a map of the three-dimensional (3D) distribution of dust in the Orion complex. Orion is the closest site of high-mass star formation, making it an excellent laboratory for studying the interstellar medium and star formation. We use data from the Gaia-TGAS catalogue combined with photometry from 2MASS and WISE to get the distances and extinctions of individual stars in the vicinity of the Orion complex. We adopt the non-parametric method of Rezaei Kh. et al. (2017) to infer the probability distribution function of the dust densities at arbitrary points throughout the region. We map the dust distribution towards different parts of the Orion complex and find the distance and depth of the cloud compatible with other recent works which show the ability of the method to be applicable on the local molecular clouds to map their 3D dust distribution. We also demonstrate the danger of only using colours of stars to derive their extinctions without considering further physical constraints like the colour-magnitude diagram (CMD).