Available Dust Maps

Two-Dimensional Dust Maps

SFD

A two-dimensional map of dust reddening across the entire sky. The “SFD” dust map is based on far-infrared emission of dust. The authors model the temperature and optical depth of the dust, and then calibrate a relationship between the dust’s far-infrared optical depth and optical reddening. This calibration was updated by Schlafly & Finkbeiner (2011).

In order to convert SFD values of E(B-V) to extinction, one should use the conversions provided in Table 6 of Schlafly & Finkbeiner (2011).

Reference: Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis (1998)

Recalibration: Schlafly & Finkbeiner (2011)

Planck

Two-dimensional maps of dust reddening across the entire sky. The Planck Collaboration (2013) fits a modified blackbody dust emission model to the Planck and IRAS far-infrared maps, and provides three different conversions to dust reddening.

The three maps provided by Planck Collaboration (2013) are based on:

  1. τ353: dust optical depth at 353 GHz.
  2. ℛ: thermal dust radiance.
  3. A recommende extragalactic reddening estimate, based on thermal dust radiance, but with point sources removed.

Reference: Planck Collaboration (2013)

Website: Planck Explanatory Supplement

Burstein & Heiles

Primarily of historical interest, the Burstein & Heiles (1982) dust reddening maps are derived from HI column density and galaxy counts.

Reference: Burstein & Heiles (1982)

Three-Dimensional Dust Maps

Bayestar

A three-dimensional map of Milky Way dust reddening, covering the three quarters of the sky north of a declination of -30°. The map is probabilistic. containing samples of the reddening along each line of sight. The “Bayestar” dust map is inferred from stellar photometry of 800 million stars observed by Pan-STARRS 1, and 2MASS photometry for a quarter of the stars.

There are two versions of Bayestar, called Bayestar17 and Bayestar15 here. By default, `dustmaps`_ will use the latest version, Bayestar17, although the earlier version of the map can be selected by providing the keyword argument `version='bayestar2015'`_ in routines such as `dustmaps.bayestar.fetch`_, `dustmaps.bayestar.BayestarQuery`_ and `dustmaps.bayestar.BayestarWebQuery`_.

Bayestar17 reports reddening in an arbitrary unit that can be converted to extinction in different bands using the coefficients given in Table 1 of Green, Schlafly, Finkbeiner et al. (2018).

Bayestar15 reports reddening in the same units as those used by SFD. Therefore, in order to convert Bayestar15 reddenings to extinction in different bands, one should use the conversions provided in Table 6 of Schlafly & Finkbeiner (2011).

References: Green, Schlafly, Finkbeiner et al. (2018), Green, Schlafly, Finkbeiner et al. (2015)

Website: argonaut.skymaps.info

Chen et al. (2014)

A three-dimensional map of dust extinction in the Galactic anticenter. The map covers about 6000 deg2, from 140° < ℓ < 240° and -60° < b < 40°, and is based on stellar photometry from the Xuyi Schmidt Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic Anticentre (XSTPS-GAC), 2MASS and WISE. The map has an angular resolution of 3 to 9 arcminutes, and reports r-band extinction, along with Gaussian error estimates.

Reference: Chen et al. (2014)

Website: http://lamost973.pku.edu.cn

IPHAS

A three-dimensional map of Milky Way dust extinction, covering a 10°-thick strip of the Galactic plane, between 30° < ℓ < 120°. The map is probabilistic, containing samples of the cumulative extinction along each line of sight. The map is based on IPHAS imaging of stars. The map returns A0, the monochromatic extinction.

Reference: Sale et al. (2014)

Website: www.iphas.org/extinction

Marshall et al. (2006)

A three-dimensional map of Milky Way dust extinction, covering a 10°-thick strip of the Galactic plane, between -100° < ℓ < 100°. The map is contains 2MASS Ks-band extinctions with a Gaussian uncertainty estimates. The map is based on a comparison of 2MASS colors of stars with expectations from the Besançon model of the Galaxy.

Reference: Marshall et al. (2006)

Website: http://cds.u-strasbg.fr/