All-sky three-dimensional dust density and extinction Maps of the Milky Way out to 2.8 kpc

Abstract

ABSTRACT Three-dimensional dust density maps are crucial for understanding the structure of the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and the processes that shape it. However, constructing these maps requires large data sets and the methods used to analyse them are computationally expensive and difficult to scale up. As a result, it has only recently become possible to map kiloparsec-scale regions of our Galaxy at parsec-scale grid sampling. We present all-sky three-dimensional dust density and extinction maps of the Milky Way out to 2.8 kpc in distance from the Sun using the fast and scalable Gaussian Process algorithm Dustribution. The sampling of the three-dimensional map is l, b, d = 1° × 1° × 1.7 pc. The input extinction and distance catalogue contains 120 million stars with photometry and astrometry from Gaia DR2, 2MASS and AllWISE. This combines the strengths of optical and infrared data to probe deeper into the dusty regions of the Milky Way. We compare our maps with other published 3D dust maps. All maps quantitatively agree at the 0.001 mag pc−1 scale with many qualitatively similar features, although each map also has its own features. We recover Galactic features previously identified in the literature. Moreover, we also see a large under-density that may correspond to an inter-arm or -spur gap towards the Galactic Centre.