New Interstellar Extinction Maps Based on Gaia and Other Sky Surveys

Abstract

We present new three-dimensional (3D) interstellar extinction maps in the \(V\) and Gaia \(G\) filters within 2 kpc of the Sun, a 3D differential extinction (dust spatial distribution density) map along lines of sight in the same space, a 3D map of variations in the ratio of the extinctions in the \(V\) and Gaia \(G\) filters within 800 pc of the Sun, and a 2D map of total Galactic extinction through the entire dust half-layer from the Sun to extragalactic space for Galactic latitudes \(|b|>13^{\circ}\). The 3D maps have a transverse resolution from 3.6 to 11.6 pc and a radial resolution of 50 pc. The 2D map has an angular resolution of 6.1 arcmin. We have produced these maps based on the Gaia DR3 parallaxes and Gaia, Pan-STARRS1, SkyMapper, 2MASS, and WISE photometry for \({\sim}100\) million stars. We have paid special attention to the space within 200 pc of the Sun and high Galactic latitudes as regions where the extinction estimates have had a large relative uncertainty so far. Our maps estimate the extinction within the Galactic dust layer from the Sun to an extended object or through the entire dust half-layer from the Sun to extragalactic space with a precision \(\sigma(A_{\textrm{V}})=0.06\) mag. This gives a high relative precision of extinction estimates even at high Galactic latitudes, where, according to our estimates, the median total Galactic extinction through the entire dust half-layer from the Sun to extragalactic objects is \(A_{\textrm{V}}=0.12\pm 0.06\) mag. We have shown that the presented maps are among the best ones in data amount, space size, resolution, precision, and other properties.