Three-dimensional Distribution of the Interstellar Dust in the Milky Way
Helong Guo, Bingqiu Chen, Haibo Yuan, Yang Huang, Dezi Liu, Yong Yang, Xinyi Li, Weixiang Sun, Xiaowei Liu
Abstract
Abstract We present a three-dimensional (3D) extinction map of the southern sky. The map covers the SkyMapper Southern Survey (SMSS) area of ∼14,000 deg 2 and has spatial resolutions between 6.′9 and 27′. Based on the multi-band photometry of SMSS, the Two Micron All Sky Survey, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer Survey, and the Gaia mission, we have estimated values of the r -band extinction for ∼19 million stars with the spectral energy distribution analysis. Together with the distances calculated from the Gaia data release 2 (DR2) parallaxes, we have constructed a 3D extinction map of the southern sky. By combining our 3D extinction map with those from the literature, we present an all-sky 3D extinction map, and use it to explore the 3D distribution of the Galactic dust grains. We use two different models, one consisting of a single disk and another of two disks, to fit the 3D distribution of the Galactic dust grains. The data is better fitted by a two-disk model, yielding smaller values of the Bayesian Information Criterion. The best-fit model has scale heights of 73 and 225 pc for the “thin” and “thick” dust disks, respectively.