De-cloaking the Galactic Center
Abstract
We present a preliminary extinction map of the Galactic Center, made by using the Raleigh-Jeans Color Excess method (Majewski et al, 2011) and a Bayesian approach. The Galactic Center, due to its high density of stars, contains the Milky Way Galaxy's majority of massive stars and their black hole/neutron star remnants. These cosmic laboratories challenge our understanding of the most extreme physical environments in the universe. However, the extinction from the intervening gas and dust is extremely high (A_V~30), and cloaks these objects from view in visible wavelengths. Near-infrared wavelengths are less susceptible to extinction from gas and dust by factors of several magnitudes, but still suffer from differential reddening at very small scales; eg, 5 arcseconds (Gosling et al MNRAS 2009). De-reddening the GC furthers broadband imaging surveys of all types, such X-ray binary IR counterpart or transient searches being carried out by CIRCE on the GTC. Furthermore, MIRADAS, with its multiplexing capability and high resolution, will take advantage of these extinction maps as well to probe the chemo-dynamics and structure of the inner Milky Way when it goes on-sky in 2018/2019.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #227
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22734110D