Astrophysics Seminar: Galactic Extinction in the North Celestial Cap Region

Abstract:

North Celestial Cap Survey (NCCS) is an optical-UV-IR survey of the sky region DEC > 80 deg. The NCCS optical data were collected in three optical bands, V, R and I, using the telescopes of the Wise Observatory. The final catalog contains about 4 million distinct objects, about 1.6 million among them are observed in all three optical bands. One of the major scientific objectives of the survey is the interstellar dust extinction research, which is vital for the magnitude and color correction of galactic and extragalactic sources. I use stellar statistics from the NCCS and Wolf diagrams to define the extinction, the distance to the dust clouds and the slope of extinction curve in the survey region. The results are compared with the Schlegel et al. (1998) reddening map, the original one and the one re-calibrated by Schlafly et al. (2010) and Schlafly & Finkbeiner (2011).

Seminar Organiser: Prof. Rennan Barkana