Red Stellar Populations and Dust Extinction toward W3

TL;DR

This study combines optical-IR photometry and Gaia data to analyze stellar populations and dust properties in the W3 molecular cloud, identifying new OB candidates and refining dust extinction correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a modified RJCE method for de-reddening stars, develops a new approach for stellar classification and cloud membership, and identifies new OB candidates in W3.

Findings

Identified 82 new OB star candidates within W3.

Quantified dust-to-dust correlations, especially IR color excess and optical depth.

Detected background B stars and potential runaway OB stars in W3.

Abstract

We explore red stellar populations toward the W3 giant molecular cloud through the use of optical-to-infrared (IR) photometry and Gaia DR 3 data, simultaneously characterizing stellar content and properties of dust in the molecular medium. We use a Rayleigh-Jeans Color Excess (RJCE) method modified to de-redden stellar observations of both red giants (RGs) and OB stars, and construct an IR Hertzsprung-Russell diagram validated against the Besanccon Galactic model. Taking advantage of the near-universal IR interstellar extinction law and precise Gaia measurements, we develop a method for obtaining the spectral classification, foreground extinction, and distance moduli of stars, validated by spectroscopically-confirmed OB stars. We constrain the observed parallax and proper motion of OB stars in W3, demonstrating the importance of considering systematic effects in the parallax bias, and assign parallax- and proper motion-based cloud membership to our stellar samples. While it has been assumed that all spectroscopic OB stars are inside the W3 cloud, we find evidence of seven background B stars and three potential runaway OB stars. The methods developed here based on known stellar populations enable us to identify 82 new OB candidates that are confidently within the cloud. We quantify several dust-to-dust empirical correlations, in particular the IR color excess $E(H-[4.5])$ and the optical depth $\tau_1$ of submillimeter dust emission at 1 THz using RGs behind W3, measuring a best fit of $E(H-[4.5]) = (1.07 \pm 0.04) \times 10^3 \, \tau_{1,\,\mathrm{HOTT}} + (0.00 \pm 0.02)$ mags.