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Published December 1, 2022 | public
Journal Article

Measuring Optical Extinction toward Young Stellar Objects Using Diffuse Interstellar Bands

Abstract

Line-of-sight extinction estimates of well-studied young T Tauri and Herbig Ae/Be stars are based on many different measurements and analysis methods. This has resulted in wide scatter among the published A_V values for the same star. In this work, we discuss the challenges in measuring extinction to actively accreting and especially outbursting young stellar objects (YSOs). We then explore a method not previously applied to young stars utilizing diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs). In early-type stars, narrow correlations exist between the DIB equivalent widths and the column density of interstellar material, and therefore the line-of-sight extinction. Here, we measure the equivalent widths of the 5780 and 6614 Å DIB features in a sample of actively accreting YSOs, and apply a DIB-reddening calibration to estimate reddening and subsequently extinction. Our calibration is newly derived from a composite of available literature data and fully accounts for the scatter in these measurements. We also compare the DIBs-inferred optical line-of-sight extinction values with previous extinction estimates for our sample stars.

Additional Information

We thank Greg Herczeg and Michael Kuhn for discussions and Chris Johns-Krull and Lisa Prato for access to several standard star spectra obtained at McDonald Observatory that were used in this analysis.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023