Extinction law at a distance up to 25 kpc toward the Galactic poles

Abstract

Photometry from the Tycho-2, 2MASS, andWISE catalogues for clump and branch giants at a distance up to 25 kpc toward the Galactic poles has allowed the variations of various characteristics of the infrared interstellar extinction law with distance to be analyzed. The results obtained by the extinction law extrapolation method are consistent for different classes of stars and different characteristics as well as with previous studies. The conventional extinction law with a low infrared extinction is characteristic of only a thin layer no farther than 100 pc from the Galactic plane and of two thin layers near Z = −600 and +500 pc. Far from the Galactic plane, in the Galactic halo, the infrared extinction law is different: the extinction in the Ks, W1, W2, W3, and W4 bands is, respectively, 0.17, 0.16, 0.16, 0.07, and 0.03 of the extinction in the V band. The accuracy of these coefficients is 0.03. If the extinction law reflects primarily the grain size distribution, then the fraction of large dust grains far from the Galactic plane is greater than that in the circumsolar interstellar medium.