AAS 201st Meeting, January, 2003
Session 34. ISM: Dust and Molecular Clouds
Oral, Monday, January 6, 2003, 2:00-3:30pm, 602-604

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[34.01] The Blue Tip of the Stellar Locus: Measuring Extinction with the SDSS

D. Schlegel, D. Finkbeiner, J. Gunn (Princeton University), D. Hogg (NYU), Z. Ivezic, G. Knapp, R. Lupton (Princeton University)

We present a robust procedure for measuring Galactic dust extinction with stars: the ``blue tip'' method. F turn-off stars (gabs ~4) reside on the blue tip of the stellar locus in ugriz color space and for g \ga 19m trace the total Galactic extinction along high-latitude lines of sight. We find this method to be robust, low noise, and relatively unbiased compared to common tracers such as the mean counts and colors of stars.

From this method, we generate maps of the Galactic reddening for 250 square degrees on the sky. These maps are completely independent of the Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis (SFD 1998) dust maps but show remarkable agreement. The reddening vector agrees well with RV=3.1.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.