2001/11/20 by Martino Romaniello, Nino Panagia, Salvatore Scuderi +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/338430
33 pages, 24 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication in the February 2002 issue of AJ. High resolution version: http://www.eso.org/~mromanie/accurate.ps.gz
arxiv created 2001/11/20 · openalex publication_date 2002/02/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We present a new technique based on multiband near-ultraviolet and optical photometry to measure both the stellar intrinsic properties, i.e., luminosity and effective temperature, and the interstellar dust extinction along the line of sight to hundreds of stars per square arcminute. The yield is twofold. On the one hand, the resulting reddening map has a very high spatial resolution, of the order of a few arcseconds, and can be quite effectively used in regions where the interstellar material is patchy, thus producing considerable differential extinction on small angular scales. On the other hand, combining the photometric information over a wide baseline in wavelength provides an accurate determination of temperature and luminosity for thousands of stars. As a test case, we present the results for the region around SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud imaged with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope .