The extinction law inside the 30 Doradus nebula

Understand

We have studied the interstellar extinction in a field of ~3' x 3' at the core of the 30 Doradus nebula, including the central R136 cluster, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

• Observations at optical and near-infrared wavelengths, obtained with the WFC3 camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope, show that the stars belonging to the red giant clump are spread across the colour-magnitude diagrams because of the considerable and uneven levels of extinction in this region.
• Since these stars share very similar physical properties and are all at the same distance, they allow us to derive the absolute extinction in a straightforward and reliable way.
• Thus we have measured the extinction towards about 180 objects and the extinction law in the range 0.3 - 1.6 micron.