text:
# Simulating the recent star formation history in the halo of NGC 5128 Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Paranal, Chile, within the Observing Programme 63.N-0229

## 1 Introduction

The two main traditional models of elliptical galaxy formation, the “monolithic collapse” (Partridge & Peebles partridge&peebles67 (1967)) and the “hierarchical assembly” model (Toomre toomre77 (1977)) assume very different mechanisms and epochs of spheroid assembly. Correspondingly, they also predict different mean ages and metallicities for the stars that build these galaxies. Until the advent of the HST and 10m class ground-based telescopes the studies of the stellar populations in the elliptical galaxies were restricted to integrated light photometry and spectroscopy. In the last few years, however, the nearest E/S0 galaxies have been resolved into stars (e.g. Soria et al. soria+96 (1996), Davidge & van den Bergh davidge+vandenbergh01 (2001), Schulte-Ladbeck et al. schulte-ladbeck+03 (2003)). The study of the star formation histories of the resolved stellar populations observed in these galaxies is an important complementary approach to the studies of the high redshift Universe, aiming to address the questions of elliptical galaxy formation and evolution.

### 1.1 Recent Star Formation in the halo of NGC 5128

At the distance of 3.8 Mpc (Soria et al. soria+96 (1996), Rejkuba rejkuba04 (2004)) NGC 5128 (=Centaurus A) is the dominant galaxy of the nearby Centaurus group and one of the closest giant elliptical galaxies to us. It is also one of the nearest AGNs and radio galaxies. It presents a number of peculiarities: the central dust lane with HII regions and OB associations at its edge, and the stellar shells which have presumably been formed in a recent accretion of a smaller companion galaxy (see review by Israel israel98 (1998)). Moreover, young blue supergiants have been identified associated with the optical filaments in the north-eastern halo (Graham & Price graham&price81 (1981), Graham graham98 (1998)).

The young stars and OB associations in the halo of NGC 5128 are roughly aligned with the ionized gas and the radio jet (Morganti et al. morganti+99 (1999), Mould et al. mould+00 (2000), Fassett & Graham fg00 (2000), Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001, 2002)) over several kiloparsecs. The preferred mechanism for this recent star formation in the halo at $`>14`$ kpc away from the nucleus is through the direct interaction of the radio jet with the gas. The necessary amounts of neutral gas for this star formation have been detected in nearby fields through HI (Schiminovich et al. schiminovich+94 (1994)) and CO molecular transitions (Charmandaris et al. charmandaris+00 (2000)). Charmandaris et al. suggested that the molecular clouds in the distant halo are associated with stellar shells and are thus remains of the last accretion episode in which NGC 5128 has merged with a gas rich companion galaxy. While the gas could have just “hung around” in the galaxy halo, the presence of the radio jet triggered the star formation in highly collimated areas. The investigation of the star formation history of the young stars and the determination of the age spread in the young stellar population can constrain the formation of the radio jet or the time of the last accretion event. The metallicity of the gas of the accreted galaxy should be reflected in the newly formed stars.

The comparison of the optical color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) with stellar evolutionary isochrones and young LMC clusters has indicated that these young stars can be as young as 10-15 Myr old (Mould et al. mould+00 (2000), Fassett & Graham fg00 (2000), Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001)). However, except for a comparison with one synthetic CMD (Mould et al. mould+00 (2000)), no detailed studies of the star formation history in the halo of NGC 5128 were made.

### 1.2 The Method

Containing stars that were born during the whole life-time of the galaxy, CMDs represent snapshots of their star formation histories. Even when limited to the bright stars, the CMDs contain useful age and metallicity indicators: the colors of the red giant branch (RGB) stars are very sensitive to metallicity; the presence of bright asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars signals an intermediate-age population; the colors and magnitudes of the bright main sequence (MS) stars and blue supergiants depend on the most recent star formation history, as well as on the metallicity.

The most effective way to analyse the distribution of stars in the CMD and to quantify the star formation history of a galaxy is through the comparison of the observed CMD with synthetic CMDs computed using stellar evolution models. This technique is based on the simulations of a large number of CMDs constructed assuming different star formation rates (SFR($`t`$)), chemical enrichment laws ($`Z(t)`$) and initial mass functions (IMF). The photometric errors and the incompleteness of the data are also simulated. Each simulated CMD then depends on all the main parameters which determine the distribution of stars in a CMD. In this way it is best accounted for the evolutionary behaviour of stars, small number of stars, and spread due to observational effects. The synthetic CMDs are then compared to the observed ones in order to determine the acceptable range of parameters and the best fitted models. This technique is currently used by several groups to investigate the star formation history (SFH) in dwarf galaxies (Ferraro et al. ferraro+89 (1989), Tosi et al. tosi+91 (1991), Bertelli et al. bertelli+92 (1992), Tolstoy tolstoy96 (1996), Gallart et al. 1996a ; 1996b , Dolphin dolphin97 (1997), Greggio et al. greggio+98 (1998), Hurley-Keller, Mateo & Nemec hurley-keller+98 (1998), Hernández, Valls-Gabaud & Gilmore hvg98 (1998), Cole et al. cole+99 (1999), Olsen olsen99 (1999), Schulte-Ladbeck et al. schulte-ladbeck+00 (2000), Harris & Zaritsky harris&zaritsky (2001)).

Here we apply this technique to investigate the recent star formation history of the halo of NGC 5128. The observations were taken with VLT using FORS1 and ISAAC in the U, V and Ks bands. Their full description as well as data reduction and the resulting CMDs were presented in Rejkuba et al. (rejkuba+01 (2001)).

This paper starts with the description of the synthetic CMD simulator, including a detailed description of the algorithms used. In the next section the young stellar population in the north-eastern halo field is simulated. We test two different metallicities and a range of star formation histories. The initial mass function is also investigated.

## 2 Description of the synthetic CMD simulator

Our synthetic CMD simulator is developed based on the code used by Greggio et al. (greggio+98 (1998)). The construction of a synthetic CMD goes through the following steps:

1. Random extraction of mass according to the initial mass function (IMF), age according to a chosen star formation rate (SFR) law, and metallicity according to the chemical enrichment law ($`Z(t)`$).
2. Positioning of the extracted star as a function of mass, age, and metallicity on the theoretical HR diagram ($`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L}/\mathrm{L}_{})`$, $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$) interpolating within stellar evolutionary tracks.
3. Transformation of the theoretical position of the star in the HR diagram ($`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L}/\mathrm{L}_{})`$, $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$) into the observational CMD assigning the bolometric corrections through interpolation within conversion tables.
4. Application of observational uncertainties, photometric errors and incompleteness, according to the results of artificial star experiments on the real data.
5. Iteration until a certain criterion (e.g. the total number of stars generated, the total mass extracted, or the total number of stars in a certain region of the simulated CMD) is satisfied.

The algorithms used for steps 1 and 2 are relatively straightforward, and used in a similar way by most groups. Hence we describe them in the Appendix. In the following sections we address steps 3 and 4 in more detail as the final results depend critically on them.

### 2.1 Bolometric corrections

Bolometric corrections (BCs) are needed to convert the theoretical $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L})\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$ point into magnitude and color, to be compared with the data. An accurate knowledge of the photometric passbands is as important to synthetic photometry as the knowledge of the standard stars and the proper calibration procedure is to observational photometry. The calibration of our data was described in detail in Rejkuba et al. (rejkuba+01 (2001)). We have derived a full set of calibration equations including the color term for the optical photometry, while only the zero point was derived for the near-IR photometry. Thus our photometric system consists of Landolt (landolt92 (1992)) $`U`$ and $`V`$ and ISAAC $`K_\mathrm{s}`$ (Cuby et al. ISAACman (2003)111http://www.eso.org/instruments/isaac/index.html).

The Kurucz (kurucz93 (1993)) database of ATLAS9 synthetic spectra covers a large range in temperatures ($`3500\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}}50,000`$ K), and gravities ($`0\mathrm{log}g5`$). Recently these models have been re-calculated by Castelli et al. (castelli+97 (1997)) and carefully compared to stellar data. Of the two sets in Castelli’s grid, the one without overshooting is found to yield the best match to the observations (Bessell et al. bcp98 (1998)). Therefore we adopt the “NOVER” files at http://kurucz.harvard.edu/ for metallicities $`[\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{H}]=2.0,1.5,1.0,0.5,0.0\text{and}+0.5`$, and microturbulent velocity $`\xi =2`$ km s-1 to derive BCs as function of gravity, effective temperature, and metallicity. This is done by convolving the spectral energy distributions from the Kurucz stellar library with filter transmission curves $`S_\lambda ^i`$:

$$F_i=\frac{\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}F_\lambda ^iS_\lambda ^i𝑑\lambda }{\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}S_\lambda ^i𝑑\lambda }$$
(1)
The magnitude and the bolometric correction are then by definition:

$`M_i=2.5\mathrm{log}F_i+ZP_i`$ (2)
$`BC_i=M_{bol}M_i=2.5\mathrm{log}(\sigma T_{eff}^4)+2.5\mathrm{log}F_iZP_i`$ (3)
$`\text{where}\sigma T_{eff}^4={\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}F_\lambda 𝑑\lambda `$ (4)
The calibration of the zero points in each band follows from the definition of the $`V`$-band bolometric correction of the Sun to be $`\mathrm{B}C_V^{}=0.07`$, and the colors of Vega $`\mathrm{M}_V^{Vega}\mathrm{M}_i^{Vega}=0`$. The spectral energy distributions of the Sun and Vega were taken from the Kurucz library as well.

It is known that the Kurucz (kurucz93 (1993)) spectral energy distributions are not very accurate for cool stars due to inadequate molecular opacities, non-LTE, and sphericity related effects (e.g. Morossi et al. morossi+93 (1993)). To extend our bolometric corrections to low temperatures ($`\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}}4200\mathrm{K}`$), we used the empirically determined temperatures and bolometric corrections from Montegriffo et al. (montegriffo+98 (1998)). Montegriffo et al. do not have fully developed metallicity classes, but rather define metal-poor ($`[\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{H}]1.0`$ dex) and metal-rich ($`[\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{H}]1.0`$ dex) samples. The differences in bolometric corrections between the two groups span a wide range 0.05-0.4 mag/dex. We also notice that their bolometric corrections are determined only for giant stars. However, the last issue is not a problem, since the low temperature stars in our case are giants with photometry in the $`V`$ and $`K_s`$-bands. In the $`UV`$ only bright young stars are observed, the giants are too faint in the $`U`$-band.

We calculate the $`\mathrm{log}g`$ of each simulated star with ($`\mathrm{log}\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{M}_{},\mathrm{log}\mathrm{L},\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}}`$) using the following two equations:

$`R^2={\displaystyle \frac{L}{4\pi \sigma T_{\mathrm{eff}}^4}}`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{log}(g/g_{})=\mathrm{log}(M/M_{})2\mathrm{log}(R/R_{})`$ (6)
where $`\mathrm{log}g_{}=4.437,\sigma =5.6710^5\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{cm}^2/\mathrm{K}^4,\mathrm{L}_{}=3.82610^{33}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{s}\text{and}\mathrm{R}_{}=6.959910^{10}\mathrm{cm}`$. The linearly interpolated bolometric correction, as a function of $`\mathrm{log}\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and $`\mathrm{log}g`$, is then applied to obtain magnitudes for the simulated stars.

In Fig. 1 we compare the evolutionary tracks of Fagotto et al. (fagotto+94 (1994)) for $`Z=0.004`$ transformed using two different sets of $`UBV`$ filters. In the right panel the comparison of $`I`$ $`vs.`$ $`VI`$ shows an excellent agreement of the colors of tracks for both sets of filters, but in the left panel it is obvious that our bolometric corrections calculated using the Landolt filters produce wider range of colors for the tracks in $`UV`$. We investigated in detail the origin of this difference, finding that it is entirely due to different $`U`$ filter used in calculating the bolometric corrections.

The Padova group uses Buser & Kurucz (bk78 (1978)) $`UBV`$ transmission curves, while our photometry has been calibrated to the Landolt (landolt92 (1992)) system. The comparison of the passbands of the two photometric systems is given in Fig. 2. Note the large difference in the $`U`$-passband wavelength coverage. The $`U`$-band is known to be the most difficult to reproduce due to the presence of the atmospheric cut-off, the presence of the Balmer break within that band, and the strong blanketing by metals (see Fig. 3). The differences between the $`B`$ and $`V`$-band filters are much smaller. Buser & Kurucz (bk78 (1978)) $`UBV`$ system has two $`B`$ filters, $`B_2`$ and $`B_3`$. Both of these systems claim to be based on the Johnson & Morgan (johnson&morgan (1953)) standard system with Buser & Kurucz $`UB`$ and $`BV`$ colors defined as follows:

$`(UB)_{syn}=(UB_2)1.093`$ (7)
$`(BV)_{syn}=(B_3V)+0.710`$ (8)
We have calculated the bolometric corrections by convolving the Kurucz stellar library with the $`UB_2B_3V`$ filters of Buser & Kurucz (bk78 (1978)). There is an excellent agreement between the transformed tracks and Padova isochrones (Bertelli et al. bertelli+94 (1994)) if the following definition of the $`UV`$ color is adopted:

$$(UV)_{syn}=(UB_2)+(B_3V)$$
(9)
The difference in the zero point is due to different calibration of the zero point bolometric corrections adopted by Buser & Kurucz with respect to the Padova isochrones (Girardi et al. girardi+02 (2002)). The Padova group adopted the standard calibration of the synthetic photometry which is based on the colors and magnitude of Vega, similar to our procedure.

This example shows how important it is to know precisely the transmission curves and the characteristics of the photometric system used. The calibration of the synthetic magnitude system has to be done in the same way as the data, by convolving the spectral energy distributions from the stellar library with the same filters used for the real observations.

Our data have been calibrated on Landolt’s stellar catalogue (Landolt landolt92 (1992)), but observed with the FORS1 telescope+CCD+filter system, so that our system’s throughput in the U band is indeed much closer to the Bessel U-filter (with a passband similar to the Buser & Kurucz bk78 (1978)), mainly due to the CCD response curve. The best approach to calibrate our photometry would have been to use a standard system which matches the one used in the observations (Bessell bessell95 (1995)). Unfortunately, our list of observed standards has no star in common with Bessell’s (bessell95 (1995)) list.

The $`U`$-magnitude difference between the two systems depends on the star’s spectral energy distribution, and therefore on temperature, gravity and metallicity. To a first approximation, the calibration equation corrects for this systematics as a function of the $`(UV)`$ color. However, a residual systematic error exists, which stems from applying to all of the observed stars the calibration regression valid for the standard stars. In order to estimate the residual error we have calculated the $`U`$-magnitude difference in the two $`U`$ passbands of the complete grid of Kurucz models. The (FORS1 - Landolt) difference of the U band Bolometric Corrections increases from $`0.2`$ to $`+0.4`$, going from the hottest to the coolest models in the grid. Once the color equation applied to the data is taken into account, the residual difference ranges from $``$ -0.06 mag for the blue stars $`(UV<0)`$, to $`0.25`$ mag at $`(UV)>2`$. We notice that this is the maximum residual error that we expect in our photometry, as it includes a very wide range of stellar parameters. Nevertheless, our photometry will tend to be too faint for the blue stars and too bright for the red stars. We will discuss in the last section the impact of this unceratinty on our results.

### 2.2 Observational biases

The synthetic CMD needs to be “corrected” for observational biases before comparing it with the observed CMD. There are two main types of observational biases:

* photometric errors: the magnitudes of stars are measured with some uncertainty
* incompleteness: some stars are lost due to crowding or high background

Blending is an additional bias that is important in crowded fields, and that combines properties of photometric errors and incompleteness.

We used the extensive artificial stars experiments (the full description can be found in Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001)) to assign the observational biases. In the artificial star experiments the input magnitude is given, and the output magnitude measured at each position of the input magnitude. If the star was lost in the background noise, or if it was completely blended with a much brighter object producing a magnitude difference between the input and the measured magnitude of more than 0.75, we considered it to be non-detected. Observational biases are applied to magnitudes to which the appropriate distance modulus and extinction were added. Thus, when applying the observational biases we pick a random object from the input table of the artificial star experiments that has magnitude and color similar to the simulated star. The simulated star then receives a realistic photometric error (magnitude difference between the recovered and input magnitude in the artificial star experiment), and incompleteness (the star in the artificial star experiment was detected or not).

## 3 Young stellar population observed in the $`UV`$ CMD

The observations of the young stars in the north-eastern shell field of NGC 5128 consist of pairs of U and V-band images taken at ESO Paranal observatory UT1 Very Large Telescope with FORS1 instrument (Szeifert FORSman (2002)222 http://www.eso.org/instruments/fors/userman/) The photometry is 50% complete for magnitudes brighter than $`V=27.5`$ and $`U=25`$ (Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001)). The shallower $`U`$-band photometry drives the incompleteness and the photometric errors in the $`UV`$ CMD (Fig. 4) and thus limits our analysis to magnitudes brighter than $`V25.5`$.

In Fig. 4 we display the $`V`$ vs. $`UV`$ CMDs of this field with different values of DAOPHOT errors in both $`U`$ and $`V`$ applied as a selection criterion. The vertical blue sequence at $`UV1`$ is populated with massive MS stars in NGC 5128, while most of the red stars belong to the foreground Galactic population. The diagonal cut-off at faint magnitudes is a consequence of the $`U`$-band incompleteness and the sharp bright magnitude cut-off at $`V=20`$ is due to the saturation limit of the $`V`$-band images. The CMD with all stars that had $`\sigma <0.5`$ is presented in the upper left panel. Comparing it with the other panels it is evident that many of the red stars have large photometric errors. This is clearer in Tab. 1, where we list fraction of stars that remain in the CMD when a cut is applied at $`\sigma `$ of 0.3, 0.2 and 0.1. Even when only the stars with the smallest photometric errors are selected, more than 50% of the blue stars survive and the young blue sequence remains well populated. We shall use this feature to investigate the recent star formation history in this field.

Fig. 5 shows the observed CMD with the transformed Padova tracks superimposed, for $`Z=0.004`$ (left) and $`Z=0.008`$ (right). No spectroscopic estimate of the metallicity of the young stars in Cen A is available in the literature. The two considered Z values are motivated by the Rejkuba et al. (rejkuba+01 (2001)) estimate, which is based on the best fitting isochrones. Notice, however, that due to the discussed difference between the Landolt and the Buser U filter, the Rejkuba et al. estimate needs to be reconsidered with the appropriately transformed tracks. A distance modulus of $`27.8`$ mag (Soria et al. soria+96 (1996)) in combination with a color excess of $`\mathrm{E}(UV)=0.62`$ yields a good fit to the position of the MS stars in Fig. 5. According to the Cardelli et al. (cardelli+89 (1989)) extinction curve, $`\mathrm{E}(UV)=0.62`$ implies $`\mathrm{E}(BV)=0.35`$, which is much larger than the foreground extinction $`\mathrm{E}(BV)=0.11`$ from Schlegel et al. (schlegel+98 (1998)) map, and implies a substantial amount of internal (perhaps differential) reddening. Rejkuba et al. estimated $`\mathrm{E}(BV)=0.15`$, due to the different U filter. Choosing a somewhat larger distance modulus of 27.92 mag (Harris et al. harris+99 (1999), Rejkuba rejkuba04 (2004)) does not change our conclusions significantly.

The magnitudes and colors of the stars belonging to the Milky Way, that are expected to be found in a $`6\stackrel{}{.}8\times 6\stackrel{}{.}8`$ field of view of FORS1, at $`l=309.5^{},b=19.5^{}`$, have been simulated using Besançon galactic model of stellar populations (Robin & Creze robin&creze86 (1986), Robin et al. robin+96 (1996)). Realistic photometric errors and incompleteness has been applied through crowding simulations. In total, at least 340 stars with colors $`UV>0`$ are expected to belong to the foreground Milky Way population (see Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001)). They are overplotted over the observed CMD in Fig. 5 as (green) filled triangles. Only a small number of stars with $`(UV)>0`$ are expected to be blue and red supergiants evolving along the blue loops in the NGC 5128 halo. Unfortunately, the width of the blue loops cannot be used to constrain the metallicity both because of the huge amount of the foreground contamination and, because of the uncertain extension of the blue loops (Ritossa ritossa96 (1996)).

The location of the post main sequence (PMS) stars, blue and red supergiants, and the extension of the loops depends critically on the convection criteria or the mixing efficiency, the metallicity, the opacities at intermediate temperatures, the mass loss and the overshooting (Renzini et al. renzini+92 (1992), Ritossa ritossa96 (1996)). At larger metallicities the thermal conductivity of the envelope is lower leading to a larger thermal imbalance of the stellar envelope and to a faster expansion to the red. The more metal-rich models have thus redder red giant minima. The models that adopt efficient mixing in the semiconvective region during the hydrogen shell burning spend most of the PMS life-times as blue supergiants, while the less efficient mixing drives the runaway expansion toward the red (Ritossa ritossa96 (1996)). The convective core overshoot during the MS in combination with efficient mixing can, however, produce models with wider loops (e.g. Fagotto et al. fagotto+94 (1994)).

The overshooting and opacity, constraining Teff, drive the amplitude of blue loops and, through the dependence of bolometric corrections on the effective temperature (BC(Teff)), they produce the sharp edge in the observed CMD. In particular the 9 M model for $`Z=0.004`$ has a very short loop (see Fig. 5). The blue excursion of this model is terminated at low temperatures, producing a sharp “red hook” in the simulated CMD (see below).

The extremely short evolutionary life-time for stars between the MS turn-off and blue edge leaves a “hole” in the CMD. On the other hand this area ($`0.5UV0`$ and $`V23`$) of the observed CMD is populated. The possible reasons include different metallicity, inadequate input physics (combination of overshooting and opacity parameters), differential reddening, bolometric corrections, photometric errors and blends of several lower mass stars. Thus we expect not to be able to reproduce well this zone.

The evolutionary lifetimes of the plotted tracks are listed in Tab. 2. Comparing the tracks to the data we see that the oldest MS stars in our observed CMD are $`4050`$ Myr old for the $`Z=0.004`$ and $`5065`$ Myr for the $`Z=0.008`$ models. The faintest evolved stars are somewhat older ($`80`$ Myr), but buried in the foreground contamination. We can thus derive the most recent star formation, and check the IMF for stellar masses larger than 7 M from the bluest stars in the CMD.

Our simulations are constructed under the requirement of reproducing the stellar counts in a box on the MS, which contains 57 stars with $`23V24`$ and $`UV<0.7`$ (Fig. 5). The faintest stars in this box are 15 Myr old. Therefore, any SFH with the last star formation episode ceasing earlier than 15 Myr ago would not populate this box, and we do not consider these models. Given the short age range sampled by the blue stars, and given their relatively smooth distribution, we consider only episodes with constant SFR, and vary the starting ($`\tau _{max}`$) and ending ($`\tau _{min}`$) epochs of active SF. We compare the synthetic and observed CMDs directly as well as the luminosity function along the MS for the stars brighter than $`V=26`$, which are not affected critically by photometric errors and incompleteness. In the next sections we address the following questions: “How old are the oldest and the youngest stars in the observed $`UV`$ CMD?” and “What is the slope of the initial mass function?”

### 3.1 Age of the young stellar population in the NGC 5128 halo field

The range of models probed is listed in Tab. 3. In the first column there is the model name, and in columns 2, 3 and 4 the input parameters regarding the IMF and the duration of the star formation are given. The output total extracted mass in the range of 0.6 to 100 M, the mean SFR for the same mass range, and the explored interval of the star formation ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$), as well as the total number of stars above the 80% incompleteness limit in $`V`$-band ($`V<25.5`$), and the number of simulated blue plume stars ($`UV<0.7`$ for $`V<25.5`$) are listed in columns 6, 7, 8 and 9 for $`Z=0.004`$, and 10, 11, 12 and 13 for models using evolutionary tracks for metallicity $`Z=0.008`$, respectively. Due to the small range of ages and to the smooth appearance of the MS, a constant star formation was considered. Therefore the columns 6 and 10 list:

$$\text{SFR}=\frac{\text{M}_{star}}{\mathrm{\Delta }\tau }$$
(10)
Four different IMF slopes have been used in the simulations. The dependence of the simulations on the IMF slope is discussed in detail in the next section. First we illustrate in detail the model CMDs made with Salpeter IMF ($`\alpha =2.35`$), varying the age range, for the two metallicities: $`Z=0.004`$ (Fig. 6) and $`Z=0.008`$ (Fig. 7). The duration of the star formation episode is indicated in each panel as the starting–ending time. An ending time of 0 Myr means that the star formation is on-going.

The sharp blue edge of the blue loops is due to the theoretical form of the blue loops. In particular, the early termination of the 9 M model for $`Z=0.004`$ produces a bend in the simulated CMDs. This transition is much smoother for the $`Z=0.008`$ models. The appearance of the CMD suggests that the 9 M model for $`Z=0.004`$ should have bluer blue edge. The high degree of contamination prevents us to draw a robust conclusion, but the $`UV`$ vs. $`V`$ CMD seems particularly suited to constrain the shape of the loops, and could be applied in stellar systems with spectroscopic abundance determination.

As the star formation lasts longer it is possible to observe the excursions of the stars in PMS phases. The reddest parts of the CMD, however, remain very sparsely populated due to the much shorter evolutionary timescales in the red with respect to the blue. Less massive ($`\mathrm{M}15\mathrm{M}_{}`$) red supergiants evolve less rapidly. Few of them are visible in the upper red part of the simulated CMDs in which star formation was not terminated. Also, as the star formation gets longer, the MS gets populated with stars of smaller masses, the total number of which is governed by the IMF.

In the direct comparison of the simulated and observed CMDs, and the corresponding luminosity functions (Fig. 6 and 7) it can be seen that all the simulations with on-going star formation fit the data equivalently well irrespectively of the maximum stellar age ($`\tau _{max}`$). The luminosity function peak is best fitted with models with longer $`\tau _{max}`$ ($`3050`$ Myr), but the differences between various models are within the Poissonian errors. Hence, using only MS stars ($`UV<0.7`$) it is not possible to constrain $`\tau _{max}`$.

On the other hand, the simulations in which the star formation has stopped 5 or 10 million years ago, have many more stars in the lower MS and around the blue edge of the loops than observed. In order to populate the box on the MS between magnitudes 23 and 24, which contains the youngest MS stars (younger than $`1415`$ Myr) and thus the ones with the shortest evolutionary timescales, many more lower mass stars were produced in these simulations. Stopping the SF at 2.5 Myr produces a MS luminosity function in agreement with the observations.

In the left panels of Fig. 8 we plot the number of stars in the blue plume for all the models with $`Z=0.008`$ (top) and $`Z=0.004`$ (bottom). The observed value is shown as a green star. Different symbols are used for models with different IMF slopes as indicated in the legend. The dashed lines indicate the 3$`\sigma `$ Poissonian deviation from the observed value to which the random errors of the models have been added in quadrature. The models outside of the dashed lines in this figure are ruled out. So, the total number of MS stars and their luminosity function constrain $`\tau _{min}`$ to be at most 2.5 Myr. The impact of the IMF on this constraint is discussed in the next section.

Although PMS stars cannot be used to select the best fitting model due to large uncertainties as discussed above, in the observed CMD there are 17 bright ($`21<V<23`$) and blue stars ($`0.7<UV<0`$) most probably in the PMS phases. They are found in the area of the CMD where there is no contamination by foreground Galactic stars. The models that have active star formation only over the last $`510`$ Myr, have one or no stars in this area of the CMD. Thus, the star formation in this field must have been going on for more than 10 Myr.

Better limits to the duration of the star formation can be obtained by comparison between the number of stars in the MS and in the PMS phases. When comparing the observed and the simulated number of stars in the red part of the CMD, it is necessary to subtract the expected number of foreground stars according to the Galactic models. The ratio of the blue plume ($`UV<0.7`$), and the total number of stars versus the duration of the star formation for the models described in Tab. 3 is presented in the upper right panel of the Fig. 8 for $`Z=0.008`$, and lower right panel for $`Z=0.004`$ models. This ratio decreases with increasing $`\tau _{max}`$, because the PMS phases become more populated.

The inflexion point in these diagrams corresponds to the maximum look-back time and hence the maximum age of the burst $`\tau _{\mathrm{max}}`$. It is $``$100 Myr for the models with $`Z=0.008`$ and $`90`$ Myr for the $`Z=0.004`$ models. Of course, this value is the lower limit for the duration of the star formation. The older stars are not observed due to the incompleteness in the $`U`$-band, hence the ratio of the blue vs. total number of stars becomes constant for longer star formation durations.

The observed ratio of the blue vs. total number of stars in NGC 5128, which has been corrected for the expected amount of foreground contamination, is indicated with a star in Fig. 8. The arrow shows that it is only a lower limit due to the large uncertainty in contamination which affects in particular the PMS phases. The number of stars redder than $`(UV)>0`$ in the observed CMD is much larger than in all the simulations which reproduce correctly the number of stars in the blue plume. Since this ratio is low, even after the foreground contamination subtraction, it points, independently from the evidence on number of MS stars, toward long $`\tau _{max}`$.

### 3.2 The initial mass function

The observations of the young stars on the MS can be used to constrain the initial mass function for the range of masses observed, $`\mathrm{M}5`$ M. The comparison of the simulated and observed luminosity functions along the MS is presented for a set of models with on-going SF lasting for 100, 50, 30, and 10 Myr, as well as for two models in which the SF was stopped 5 and 2.5 Myr ago. Fig. 9 compares the observed luminosity function (dots) with the models for Z=0.008 and four different IMF slopes: Salpeter IMF (slope $`\alpha =2.35`$; solid black line), Scalo IMF (slope $`\alpha =2.6`$ for $`\mathrm{M}3.5`$ M; Scalo scalo86 (1986); green short dashed line), IMF with slope $`\alpha =2`$ (blue long dashed line), and IMF with slope $`\alpha =3`$ (red dotted line).

The observed slope of the MS between $`22.5<V<24.5`$ is $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}N/\mathrm{\Delta }V=0.47`$ as derived by least square fitting of the observed luminosity function in this magnitude range. The results for the models with $`Z=0.004`$ and $`Z=0.008`$ are equivalent and we plot only $`Z=0.008`$ models in Fig. 9. The models with IMF slope $`\alpha =2.35`$ provide the best fit of the luminosity function for both metallicities, $`Z=0.004`$ and $`0.008`$. Slightly shallower ($`\alpha =2`$) and steeper ($`\alpha =2.6`$) slopes for IMF are also acceptable, while the $`\alpha =3`$ slope produces too many stars in the lower mass bins in all the simulations. Note that the models where the SF has stopped 2.5 Myr ago are well fitted with shallower IMFs, and they would exclude Scalo or steeper IMF slopes.

These results are confirmed by the $`\chi ^2`$ tests applied to the luminosity functions of the blue stars and are also summarized in Fig. 8. In the left panels the dashed lines exclude the models with IMF slope $`\alpha =3`$, because the simulated number of blue plume stars is always larger than observed (having fixed in the simulations the number of stars in a box on the MS). In the right panels the above mentioned saturation value (or the inflexion point) of the number of PMS vs. the total number of stars depends on the IMF slope. The steeper the IMF, the more favoured the PMS. Even though the observed ratio would favour $`\alpha =3.00`$, this IMF slope is excluded by the excess number of stars in the blue plume, which is the more robust constraint. Therefore it seems that the contamination of the red part of the CMD is indeed much larger than that given by the Besançon counts as already noted by Rejkuba et al. (rejkuba+01 (2001)). Additionally, there may be few compact background galaxies contaminating the red part of the CMD.

Our simulations do not include binary stars. The presence of binaries would increase the IMF slope by an amount that depends on the slope and the fraction of stellar mass in binary or multiple stellar systems. According to Sagar & Richtler (sagar&richtler91 (1991)) if the fraction of binaries is more than 50% the IMF slope increases by 0.3 to 0.4. As the binary fraction in our field is not known, it is possible that the actual IMF slope is somewhat steeper than $`\alpha =2.35`$.

## 4 Young stellar population in the $`VK`$ CMD

Fig. 10 shows $`VK`$ optical-near IR CMD for this field constructed from the VLT FORS1 $`V`$-band and ISAAC $`Ks`$-band photometry published by Rejkuba et al. (rejkuba+01 (2001)). Most of the stars are distributed along the red giant branch and are thus older than $`1`$ Gyr. There is also a large number of bright AGB stars, including several hundred Mira variables, located above the tip of the RGB (Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+03 (2003)). Some $`110`$ stars with colors $`2VK4`$ are expected to belong to foreground Galactic population. Several dozens of stars in the bluest part of the diagram ($`VK<2`$) do not appear in the control halo field (see Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001)). They have very small photometric errors (90% has $`\sigma <0.2`$), and are bright in the optical. All but two stars are detected in the $`U`$-band images as well. We plot the spatial distribution of the blue ($`VK<2`$ and $`K<24`$) and red ($`VK>5`$ and $`19<K<21`$) stars in the shell field in Fig. 10. While the reddest objects spread evenly over the field, the majority of the blue stars are aligned in the direction of the jet just like in the optical CMDs.

The low number of young stars observed in the much smaller field of view of ISAAC prevents us from drawing conclusions from their observations. The comparison with the Padova stellar evolutionary tracks (in the upper panels of Fig. 10) for two different metallicities $`Z=0.004`$ (left) and $`Z=0.008`$ (right), indicates again a very small difference between the models.

The $`VK`$ CMD gives complementary information about the older stellar population in the halo. However, due to large incompleteness in the red parts of this CMD (see Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001)), the SFH of the old stars in NGC 5128 will be investigated with deeper HST+ACS observations.

## 5 Discussion and Conclusions

The recent star formation history in the north-eastern halo field in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 was investigated with the means of synthetic CMDs. The comparison of the isochrones and the data has to be done with great care, using the correct filter transmission curves to compute a consistent set of bolometric corrections. The $`U`$-band is known to be the most difficult to reproduce due to the presence of the atmospheric cut-off, to the presence of the Balmer break within that band, and to strong blanketing by metals. Additionally due to large differences between the $`U`$-band filters and a possible miss-match in stellar properties ($`\mathrm{log}\mathrm{g},T_{eff}`$ and \[M/H\]) between the calibrators and program objects, it is possible to introduce systematic errors if the calibrators do not rely on the same photometric system as the observations. This affects mostly our reddening estimate and very little other results.

The new reddening estimated by matching the locus of the observed MS in the $`UV`$ plane with the models, using the corrected bolometric corrections for $`U`$ passband and assuming the Galactic extinction law (Cardelli et al. cardelli+89 (1989)) is $`\mathrm{E}(BV)=0.35`$, significantly larger than previously obtained $`\mathrm{E}(BV)=0.15`$ (Rejkuba et al. rejkuba+01 (2001)). It should be noted, though, that Rejkuba et al. estimate is obtained from the comparison of mostly foreground stars with isochrones, and is in fact in good agreement with $`\mathrm{E}(BV)=0.11`$ from Schlegel et al. (schlegel+98 (1998)) maps. This implies a rather significant internal extinction in this field. While some internal extinction in the areas of recent star formation could be expected, we would like to stress that this result has large uncertainty due to above mentioned difficulties to reproduce correctly the $`U`$-band. The maximum possible systematic error introduced by the calibration to the Landolt photometric system is of the order of 0.04-0.08 in the $`U`$-band for the bluest stars. This translates to a possible over-estimate of reddening of $`\mathrm{E}(BV)=0.070.14`$. Assuming the maximum possible systematic error, the internal extinction in this field is reduced to about $`\mathrm{E}(BV)0.10`$.

Unfortunately, on the basis of the $`U`$\- and $`V`$-band photometry alone it is not possible to constrain the metallicity of the stars due to reddening–distance–metallicity degeneracy of the models. However, the comparison of the synthetic and observed CMDs gave a number of quantitative constraints to the recent SFH in the studied halo field.

We have constructed simulated CMDs of young stars in the halo, having fixed the number of stars in a box on the bright portion of the MS, for two metallicities Z=0.004 and Z=0.008. The parameters that were varied were $`\tau _{max}`$ (the starting epoch of the SF), $`\tau _{min}`$ (the ending epoch of the SF), and $`\alpha `$ (the slope of the IMF).

The blue MS stars and their luminosity function constrain $`\tau _{min}`$ to be smaller than $`2.5`$ Myr and exclude the IMF slopes steeper than $`\alpha 2.6`$. The ratio of the blue vs. total number of stars favours steeper IMF slope and longer star formation duration ($`\tau _{max}100`$ Myr). This is a robust result and is not affected by the systematic errors in calibration, as the slope of the MS does not change. The exact ratio of the blue vs. total number of stars may be affected by the systematics, but not so much to change our conclusions.

From the simulations with $`\tau _{\mathrm{min}}=0`$ and $`\tau _{\mathrm{max}}=100`$ Myr, the total extracted mass in stars in the range of masses $`0.6\text{M}100`$ M is $``$0.4, 0.7, or $`1.3\times 10^6`$ M, for IMF slopes of 2 and 2.35, or 2.6, respectively. The SFR associated with these IMFs and mass limits are approximately 0.004, 0.007, and 0.013 M yr-1, for the three IMF slopes in the above order, and it is independent of $`\tau _{max}`$. Moreover the smooth appearance of the MS, the absence of gaps and breaks in the slope of the MS luminosity function, indicates that most probably no major fluctuations in the SFR have occurred over the sampled time interval. The reported values of the SFR depend on a combination of the MS and PMS stars, for which the possible systematic errors in magnitudes (that go in different direction for these two groups) partially cancel out. We estimate that our results are not changed strongly by the systematics in calibration.

At the distance of 3.6 Mpc, the observed field surveys a projected area of approximately 45 kpc2, so that the derived star formation rates range from $`9\times 10^5`$ to $`3\times 10^4`$ M yr-1 kpc-2. This is lower than the typical SFR quoted for the solar neighbourhood ($`4.2\times 10^3`$ M yr-1 kpc-2; Timmes et al. timmes+95 (1995)), and is on the low side of the SFRs derived via theoretical simulations for dwarf irregular galaxies in the Local Group (ranging from approximately $`10^4`$ to $`10^2`$ M yr-1 kpc-2; Marconi et al. marconi+95 (1995), Tolstoy tolstoy96 (1996), Gallart et al. 1996a ). For example, the star formation rate in WLM dIrr within the last million years was $`1.3\times 10^3`$ M yr-1 kpc-2 (Dolphin dolphin00 (2000)).

On a more speculative side, it is possible to estimate the maximum duration of the future star formation. The fuel for this recent star formation is provided by the large HI gas cloud in the vicinity of the field (Schiminovich et al. schiminovich+94 (1994)). Assuming the constant SFR and a 100% efficiency in converting gas to stars, we can estimate the gas depletion timescale as:

$$\tau _g=\frac{\text{M}_{\mathrm{HI}}}{\text{SFR}}$$
(11)
In the north-eastern shell very close to where the star formation is observed, $`2.1\times 10^7`$ M of HI have been detected (Schiminovich et al. schiminovich+94 (1994)) as well as $`1.7\times 10^7`$ M of H2 (Charmandaris et al. charmandaris+00 (2000)). At the constant star formation level of 0.006 M yr-1 it would take $``$100 Myr to use up all the molecular gas and $``$230 Myr to use all the hydrogen.

Our results place a lower limit of $`100`$ Myr to the last merging event and a lower limit to the time of the formation of the jet in Cen A. To set better constraints on the starting epoch of the last SF episode deeper CMDs and a more robust determination of the foreground contamination are necessary.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank D. Minniti and D. Silva for useful comments. We acknowledge an anonymous referee for his/her very useful comments, and especially for pointing out the uncertainty of the photometry due to the calibration procedure.

## Appendix A Random extraction of a star with a given mass and age

We use a Monte Carlo algorithm to randomly select a mass and an age according to a given distribution. The mass is extracted according to a single slope (e.g. Salpeter IMF; Salpeter salpeter55 (1955)),

$$dN=AM^\alpha dM$$
(12)
or double slope initial mass function (e.g. Gould IMF; Gould et al. gould+97 (1997)) with slope $`\alpha _1`$ within a mass range $`M_1MM_2`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ within $`M_2MM_3`$. Here “A” is the normalisation factor that depends on the upper and lower mass limits used in the models. The choice of the slope is a free parameter.

The age distribution is adopted to be either flat, representing a constant star formation rate,

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=C\text{for}\tau _{min}t\tau _{max}$$
(13)
or exponentially decreasing,

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=Ce^{t/\tau }\text{for}\tau _{min}t\tau _{max}$$
(14)
with given limits for the age of the oldest stars ($`\tau _{max}`$) and for the duration of the star formation episode ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =\tau _{max}\tau _{min}`$).

We have used a single metallicity simulator to produce synthetic CMDs for the young stellar population. This is a good approximation, because the spread in ages of the young stars ($`\text{few}\times 10`$ Myr) is too short for a significant metal enrichment to occur. However in the simulation of the optical-near IR CMDs that are dominated by the old and intermediate-age population, evolution of the metallicity would have to be assumed.

## Appendix B Interpolation of the stellar evolutionary models

We have adopted two different sets of models: Padova models (Fagotto et al. fagotto+94 (1994)) and models computed by Cassisi & Salaris (cassisi&salaris (1997)) and extended by Bono et al. (1997a ; 1997b ). For the simulations of single metallicity star formation histories used to compare with the youngest stars in NGC 5128, we use the Padova models by Fagotto et al. (fagotto+94 (1994)). These models have tracks for stellar masses ranging from 0.6 to 120 $`M_{}`$. The newer set of Padova models (Girardi et al. girardi+00 (2000)) are not computed for stars with masses larger than 7 $`M_{}`$ such as those that are observed in the north-eastern halo field of NGC 5128.

Given the extracted mass and age, the luminosity and temperature of the star were determined via the linear interpolation in a set of evolutionary tracks. Each track consists of a number of points (age, mass, $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L}/\mathrm{L}_{})`$, $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$). We have divided each track into portions according to stellar evolutionary phase, and interpolated linearly between the adjacent tracks within the same portion. Typically, the portions of the tracks are:

* Main sequence (MS) - ending either at core H exhaustion or at the start of the first runaway expansion
* Subgiant branch - ending at the base of the RGB
* RGB - ending at the tip of the RGB
* Horizontal branch - ending either at the core He exhaustion or at the base of the AGB
* Early AGB - ending at the first thermal pulse

For the high mass stars ($`\mathrm{M}20\mathrm{M}_{}`$), whose evolution is affected by mass loss, we divide the evolution in two major phases (MS and post main sequence), and choose conveniently the description of the post main sequence (PMS) phase, inserting further sub-phases when needed.

In most of the cases the $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L})`$ and $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$ of the extracted star are interpolated between the values of adjacent masses read at the same fractional age in the appropriate evolutionary phase:

$$t_{ph}=(tt_0)/(t_1t_0)$$
(15)
where $`t_0`$ and $`t_1`$ are respectively the ages at the beginning and at the end of the appropriate evolutionary phase and $`t`$ is the age of the extracted object. In few evolutionary phases when luminosity and/or temperature presented a maximum or minimum at variable $`t_{ph}`$, we inserted a break $`t_{ph}(t_{ph,br})`$ and effectively divided that phase into two sub-phases. Log(L) and $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$ of the extracted star at the extracted age are then found by interpolation at:

$`t_{ph}/t_{ph,br}\text{for ages}t_{ph}t_{ph,br}`$ (16)
$`(t_{ph}t_{ph,br})/(1t_{ph,br})\text{for ages}t_{ph}t_{ph,br}`$ (17)
When the interpolation has to be done also in metallicity, the simple linear interpolation algorithm described above is not enough. It is necessary to perform a bilinear interpolation, because the stars of the same masses, but different metallicities have different ages. Thus for each extracted mass one has to first interpolate in $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L})`$ and $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$ for a given age, and then again for a given metallicity. In order to simplify the problem Zoccali et al. (zoccali+03 (2003)) adopted a set of isochrones as a starting point. Using the tabulated values of $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L})`$ and $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$ for stars of given mass in an isochrone the interpolation is done linearly within isochrones of the same age and different metallicities. The Padova models are not adequate for these simulations due to the very low number of points in each isochrone (approx. 30-55 points for each track) and it is better to use the Cassisi models (Cassisi & Salaris cassisi&salaris (1997), Bono et al. 1997a ; 1997b ) which have much more detailed evolution with more than 600 points per track. Given a mass and metallicity, the luminosity and temperature of the star are determined through the linear interpolation in a set of isochrones. The interpolation in $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{L})`$ and $`\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}})`$ is made for the mass that has the same evolutionary phase of the extracted mass:

$`ph=m/m_1\text{for objects on the main sequence}`$ (18)
$`ph=m_0+(mm_0)/(m_1m_0)\text{for later phases}`$ (19)
where $`m_0`$ and $`m_1`$ are the masses at the beginning and the end of the evolutionary phase. The evolutionary phases are as before: main sequence, subgiant branch, RGB, core-helium burning and AGB.


format: text

text:
# A study of RXTE and BeppoSAX observations of Cyg X-3

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Cygnus X-3 is a bright X-ray binary system, located $``$9 kpc away (Predehl, ) in the plane of the Galaxy. In spite of its discovery already in 1966 (giacconi, ), it remains poorly understood. The companion is probably a Wolf-Rayet star with huge mass loss (keerkwijk, ). The nature of the compact object remains unknown.

The system exhibits distinct orbital modulation with a 4.8 hr period, observed both in X-rays and infrared. In radio, Cyg X-3 is the brightest X-ray binary (mccollough99, ), and its very strong radio outbursts indicate the presence of a jet. In X-rays, it exhibits a wide range of variability patterns. On the timescales of months to years, transitions between the hard and soft spectral state occur. The observed lack of ms-timescale variability appears to be due to scattering in the strong wind of the companion (mccollough, ).

## 2 RXTE SPECTRA

We use PCA/HEXTE data from 42 observations in 1996–2000. We use the PCUs 0–2 and the top layer only. We fit each of the PCA/HEXTE spectra with the same model as applied to INTEGRAL/RXTE spectra from Cyg X-3 (vilhu, ). The model includes Comptonization by hybrid (i.e., both thermal and nonthermal) electrons ((coppi, ; gierlinski, )), Compton reflection from an ionized medium (mz95, ), and absorption by fully and partially covering neutral media. As discussed in (vilhu, ), this model treats the low-energy part of the spectrum relatively phenomenologically, given the strong absorption taking place in Cyg X-3 and the PCA energy coverage limited to $`>`$3 keV. Still, it provides good fits to the PCA/HEXTE spectra and a physical description of the hard X-rays.

The obtained model spectra are shown in Fig. 1. We have divided them into five groups ordered by the decreasing flux at 20 keV. The increasing group number also roughly corresponds to the decreasing spectral hardness in the 10–20 keV range. We classify the groups 1–2, 3–4, and 5 as belonging to the hard, intermediate and soft state, respectively. Some of the flux variability within each group is caused by the orbital modulation.

We have then created average PCA/HEXTE spectra for each group. We have fitted them with the same model as above, obtaining $`0.3<\chi _\nu ^2<1.9`$ (with a 1% systematic error). The resulting spectra are shown in Fig. 2.

We find that the average spectra require the presence of Comptonizing nonthermal electrons to a varying degree. In the hard state, thermal Comptonization appears to dominate, and the limited high-energy sensitivity of HEXTE prevents us from obtaining precise constraints on nonthermal electrons. The Cyg X-3 spectra observed in 2002 Dec. by RXTE and INTEGRAL (vilhu, ) belong to this state and are closest to our group 2. The intermediate and soft-state spectra are dominated by the disk component Comptonized by a low-temperature plasma, but then followed by a significant hard tail clearly requiring the presence of both hot thermal electrons and nonthermal ones.

Overall, the high-energy parts of the spectra are quite similar to the spectra of GRS 1915+105 shown in (z01, ). The hard-state spectra are similar to those of the state $`\chi `$ (in the classification of (belloni, )), with the hard X-ray photon indices of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }3`$. The soft state spectra are then similar to the spectrum in the $`\gamma `$ state of (z01, ), with both objects showing the characteristic hard tail with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2`$. Note that in the case of GRS 1915+105, the presence of nonthermal electrons is required not only in the soft state but also in the hard one. The similarity between the two objects represents a very strong argument for the black-hole nature of the compact object in Cyg X-3.

## 3 ASM LIGHTCURVES

On the basis of the RXTE/ASM (levine, ) lightcurve (Fig. 3), we can clearly distinguish the hard and soft states similar to those defined above. Here, somewhat arbitrarily, we define the hard and the soft state by the criterion of the countrate smaller and greater than 15 s-1, respectively. The resulting (dwell-by-dwell) lightcurves have then been folded with the orbital period using the parabolic ephemeris (singh, ), see Fig. 4.

We find distinct differences in the shape of the two lightcurves. The maximum is broad and flat in the hard state, whereas it forms a sharp peak followed by a secondary one in the soft state. We also see different shapes around the minimum. The differences indicate changes in the source configuration taking place during state transitions. We caution, however, that our criterion to distinguish the states should be phase-dependent as the orbital modulation changes the countrate. Due to this effect, a state with the countrate near 15 s-1 gives contribution to either hard or the soft state depending on the phase. We intend to take into account this effect and to study physical implications of the shape of the state-resolved folded lightcurves in the future.

## 4 PHASE-RESOLVED RXTE SPECTRA

We consider now three subsequent RXTE pointed observations in the hard state in 1996 Aug., see Fig. 5. We have divided the data into 18 parts, each not exceeding in duration 15% of the orbital period. For each part, we have obtained the spectrum, which we then fitted with the model described above. We find variability of the overall flux, relatively minor changes in the degree of absorption, and distinct changes in the Fe ionization state. Fig. 6 shows 8 selected model spectra.

In the minimum (phase 0/1), there is a low ionization or neutral Fe absorption edge at $``$7 keV. On the other hand, a strongly ionized Fe absorption edge at $``$9 keV is prominent in the maximum (phase 0.5). The edge energy and depth indicates the presence of a plasma with He-like Fe with the Thomson optical depth $`>`$1. Due to the low energy resolution of the PCA, it is impossible to determine the presence of any narrow absorption or emission spectral features.

### 4.1 A FIT TO BeppoSAX DATA

We then use a hard-state BeppoSAX observation from 1996 Sep. 22–24, closest in the spectral shape to our group 2 of Figs. 12. In this preliminary study, we fit only data from the MECS (which has energy resolution much better than that of the PCA), see Fig. 7. We find that the model described above gives a very poor fit with $`\chi _\nu ^240`$ as it cannot account for the discrete spectral features present in the $``$1.7–8 keV band.

Thus, our new model consists of the Comptonization/reflection continuum (as above) and a component from a photoionized plasma, all absorbed in neutral medium. The absorber includes both the interstellar medium and the wind from the companion, with the best-fit total $`N_\mathrm{H}3.9\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2. We also include an Fe K$`\alpha `$ line from an accretion disk (fabian, ). The emission from the photoionized plasma (calculated using xstar (kallmann, )) turns out to be crucial. It improves the fit dramatically, to $`\chi _\nu ^21.6`$. This is due to that component accounting for the strong emission features from highly ionized S, Si and Fe present in the MECS spectrum. Note that the BeppoSAX observation lasted more than nine orbital periods; thus, our results regard the phase-averaged spectrum.

This is our first, and preliminary, attempt of high resolution spectroscopy for Cyg X-3. We plan to apply our model to other BeppoSAX observations and those by Chandra.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

We have obtained several major new results regarding X-rays from Cyg X-3, a preliminary account of them is given here. We have obtained the first classification of its X-ray spectra, forming 5 classes defined by the spectral hardness and the strength of the soft, disk-like component. Each class is well fitted by a physical model including Comptonization by both thermal and nonthermal electrons and Compton reflection. Apart from the presence of the very strong absorption in Cyg X-3, its intrinsic spectra are strikingly similar to those of the black-hole binary GRS 1915+105 . This represents a strong argument for the presence of a black hole in Cyg X-3.

In the softest state, we have found a high-energy tail with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2`$ extending above 100 keV. Such a spectral feature also appears in the brightest states of some other black-hole binaries, in particular GRS 1915+105 (z01, ) and XTE J1550–564 (d02, ). The origin of this tail is probably due to Comptonization by nonthermal electrons.

We then present the RXTE/ASM lightcurve of this object, and obtain its profile folded over the orbital period. For the first time, we find distinct differences in its shape between the soft and hard states. This indicates some effects of the different X-ray emission on the surrounding absorbing medium causing the orbital modulation.

We also investigate the phase-resolved X-ray spectroscopy based on the PCA data. We find the $``$9 keV edge from He-like Fe becomes strongest at the maximum, i.e., around the phase 0.5.

Last but not least, we fit the spectrum from an instrument with a medium energy resolution, the BeppoSAX/MECS. The spectrum, belonging to the hard state, shows a number of emission features, which we fit by a model of photoionized plasma. This component improves the fit to the data from $`\chi _\nu ^240`$ to $``$1.6.

This research has been supported in part by KBN grants 5P03D00821, 2P03C00619p1,2, and PBZ-KBN-054/P03/2001. We thank L. Hjalmarsdotter, P. Lachowicz, F. Paerels, and O. Vilhu for valuable discussions, and the RXTE/ASM team for their quick-look results.


text:
# Interstellar Extinction in the Milky Way Galaxy

## 1 Introduction

This conference is a testament to the wide ranging impact of dust grains on the properties of the interstellar medium and to the rich variety of research opportunities in the interstellar dust field. Among these studies, interstellar extinction — the absorption and scattering of light by grains — often plays a central role. The ability of grains to transmit, redirect, and transmute electromagnetic energy is enormously important to the physics of interstellar space. The wavelength dependence of extinction provides important diagnostic information about the physical properties of grain populations, and often serves as a first test for possible grain models. And, perhaps most far-reaching, interstellar extinction profoundly limits our ability to study the universe. It is certainly fair to say that many more astronomers care about extinction, than care about the dust grains that produce it!

In recent history there have been a number of excellent review articles about, or including, the basic properties of interstellar extinction in the Milky Way galaxy (e.g., Savage & Mathis 1979; Massa & Savage 1989; Draine 1995; and Draine 2003). In addition, the book by Whittet (2003) provides a valuable general reference. Since the pace of research in the extinction field is such that the astronomical community is not really demanding a new review article every year, I have taken a liberal approach to the notion of a “review.” In this paper, my aim is principally to review an idea, rather than a field. The idea is that — despite the wide range of spatial variations present — the $`\lambda `$-dependence of Galactic extinction can be viewed as a smoothly varying 1-parameter family and that the normalcy of an extinction sightline can be judged by how well it fits into this family. In a sense, this article is a natural follow-up to that by Massa & Savage (1989) presented at the Santa Clara dust meeting. Massa & Savage gave a comprehensive review of the detailed $`\lambda `$-dependence of extinction and included a discussion of the then-recent results of Cardelli, Clayton, & Mathis (1988, 1989) who first showed a relationship between extinction properties in the IR/optical and in the UV. It is these results which have given rise to the 1-parameter family scenario.

I begin this article with a brief description of the basic properties and terminology of Galactic extinction (§2) and then give a short history of the key developments which provide the primary background for this paper (§3). In §4, I will examine the evidence for a multi-wavelength connection between IR, optical, and UV extinction, i.e., the issue of a 1-parameter family, based on a new analysis of UV, optical, and IR data. The analysis incorporates a threefold increase over past studies in the number of sightlines for which IR and UV data are combined, and utilizes a new technique for deriving extinction curves which promises to allow precise extinction studies to be extended to more lightly-reddened sightlines than previously possible. Finally, in §5 I will revert to classical“review-mode” and note a number of recent programs and results which are helping to clarify our view of the $`\lambda `$-dependence of Galactic extinction and the relationship between extinction properties and interstellar environment.

## 2 The Extinction Basics

While the ultimate interpretation of results from extinction studies may be very complex, the measurements themselves for Galactic (and many extra-Galactic) sightlines are, in principle, straightforward. The most commonly used technique for deriving the $`\lambda `$-dependence of extinction, the “pair method,” is illustrated in idealized form in Figure 1. Measuring the extinction produced by an interstellar cloud requires photometric or spectrophotometric observations of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of some astronomical object — usually a star — located behind the cloud and identical measurements of an identical object located at an identical distance, but unaffected by interstellar dust. The total extinction in magnitudes at each wavelength $`A_\lambda `$ (which is essentially a measure of the optical depth $`\tau _\lambda `$) is then simply computed from the ratios of the SEDs as shown in Figure 1. Note that the assumption implicit in this discussion is that the star is located far from the interstellar cloud (as indicated in Figure 1) and that no photons are scattered into the line of sight. Such an assumption is not necessarily valid in the case of extinction produced by circumstellar material.

Because reddened/unreddened star pairs are nearly never at the same distance and, in fact, the stellar distances are usually poorly determined, the total extinction $`A_\lambda `$ is rarely computed directly. Instead, the stellar SEDs are usually normalized by the flux in a common wavelength region before computing the extinction. The usual choice for this is the optical $`V`$ band. This normalized extinction $`A_{\lambda V}`$ (computed by substituting $`F_\lambda /F_V`$ and $`F_\lambda ^0/F_V^0`$ into the equation in Figure 1) is also known as the color excess $`E(\lambda V)`$ and is related to the total extinction by $`E(\lambda V)`$ = $`A_\lambda A_V`$.

To effectively compare the $`\lambda `$-dependence of extinction among sightlines with very different quantities of interstellar dust, the color excess $`E(\lambda V)`$ itself must be normalized by some factor related to the amount of dust sampled. The optical color excess $`E(BV)`$ is usually employed for this purpose. This second normalization yields the most commonly found form for observed “extinction curves”, namely $`E(\lambda V)/E(BV)`$. This normalized extinction is related to the total extinction $`A_\lambda `$ through the relation $`E(\lambda V)/E(BV)=A_\lambda /E(BV)A_V/E(BV)`$. The quantity $`A_V/E(BV)`$, i.e., the ratio of total extinction to color excess in the optical region, is usually denoted $`R_V`$. If its value can be determined for a line of sight, then the easily-measured normalized extinction can be converted into total extinction.

It has been noted often that $`E(BV)`$ is a less-than-ideal normalization factor. Certainly a physically unambiguous quantity, such as the dust mass column density, would be preferred, or even a measure of the total extinction at some particular wavelength, such as $`A_V`$. However, the issue is simply measurability. We have no model-independent ways to assess dust mass and total extinction requires either that we have precise stellar distances or can measure the stellar SEDs in the far-IR where extinction is negligible. While IR photometry is now available for many stars through the 2MASS survey, the determination of total extinction from these data still requires assumptions about the $`\lambda `$-dependence of extinction longward of 2$`\mu `$m and can be compromised by emission or scattering by dust grains near the stars. In this paper, all the observed extinction curves will be presented in the standard form of $`E(\lambda V)/E(BV)`$. Only in the case of model curves, and for illustrative purposes, will alternate normalizations be employed.

The quality of a pair method extinction curve clearly depends on how well a reddened object can be matched with an unreddened comparison object. Massa et al. (1983) discuss the effects and magnitude of “mismatch errors” on extinction curves. In general, mismatch effects become less important as the amount of extinction increases, and strongly limit our ability to probe the $`\lambda `$-dependence of extinction in lightly reddened sightlines, such as through the nearby interstellar medium and the galactic halo. In §4, I will present results based on the substitution of stellar atmosphere models for the unreddened member of a pair method star team. Along with a number of other advantages, this technique promises to greatly improve the accuracy of extinction curves derived for low-reddening sightlines.

Several decades of work utilizing pair method extinction curves spanning the near-IR through UV spectral domain have provided a good estimate of the “average” $`\lambda `$-dependence of extinction in the Milky Way galaxy. (I will defer describing what I mean by “average” until §3 below). Figure 2 shows the familiar shape of this “Average Galactic Extinction Curve”, plotted as $`E(\lambda V)/E(BV)`$ vs. inverse wavelength. This type of presentation was clearly invented by UV astronomers to emphasize that spectral region, but also has the advantage of being essentially a plot of normalized extinction cross section vs. photon energy. The Average Curve itself is shown by the thick solid and dashed curve, with a number of specific features labeled. I use the solid curve to denote the spectral regions where I think the form of the extinction is particularly well-determined. These are the IR 1.25–2.2 $`\mu `$m region (based on 2MASS JHK photometry), the optical 5500-3600 Å region (based on UBV and uvby photometry) and the UV 2700–1150 Å region (based on IUE satellite spectrophotometry).

The most prominent feature in the curve is the “bump” at 2175 Å. This has been shown to be a pure absorption feature with a Lorentzian-like cross section, and likely arises from a specific physical process occurring on a specific — although currently unidentified — type of dust grain (see §3). The mean profile of the bump is shown by the dash-dot curve at the bottom of the figure. If the profile of the bump is removed from the extinction curve, the underlying extinction in its vicinity is seen to be linear and its slope can be used to characterize the steepness of UV extinction (“UV slope” in Figure 2). At wavelengths shortward of $``$1500 Å the extinction departs from the linear extrapolation, rising more rapidly and generally with pronounced curvature (“FUV rise” in Figure 2).

Probably the most outstanding observational characteristic of interstellar extinction is its spatial variability. I show this graphically in Figure 3 where analytic fits to 96 Galactic extinction curves are overplotted, in the form $`E(\lambda V)/E(BV)`$. Only the highly constrained IR, optical, and UV spectral regions are shown. These curves were produced as part of the analysis discussed in §4 below, and their details will be discussed there. Here they simply serve to demonstrate the degree of variability found along Milky Way sightlines. This variability is a two-edged sword. It can provide endless misery to those who seek to correct astronomical observations for the effects of extinction, but also a wealth of data for those who model the interstellar dust grain populations. The extinction variations presumably reflect general differences in the grain populations from sightline to sightline. Understanding how the various spectral regions of the curves relate to each other and how they respond to changes in the interstellar environments can provide information critical for characterizing interstellar grains.

## 3 A Brief History

A detailed history of the development of our understanding of interstellar extinction is beyond the limited scope I have set for this article. In this section I will outline only a few key items which play a role in the re-analysis of Galactic extinction data to be presented in §4.

The $`\lambda `$-dependence of IR and optical extinction has been studied extensively using ground-based photometry and sightline-to-sightline variations have long been recognized (e.g., Johnson 1965). These variations can be characterized by their $`R_V`$ values, which range from $``$2 to $``$5.5 for sightlines through the diffuse ISM, with a mean value of $``$3.1. The shape of the extinction curve at wavelengths longward of $``$1.2 $`\mu `$m (i.e., the $`J`$ band) has been suggested as invariant and universal, following a power law dependence proportional to $`\lambda ^{1.84}`$ (see the discussion in Whittet 1992).

UV extinction measurements require space-based observations and date back to the late 1960’s. The 2175 Å bump was discovered by Stecher (1969) and early observations clearly revealed the presence of sightline-to-sightline variations in the $`\lambda `$-dependence of UV extinction. Soon after, measurements of the UV component of the diffuse galactic light revealed a broad minimum in the scattering albedo centered near 2200 Å, indicating the bump to be an absorption feature (Witt & Lillie 1973). The large spectrophotometric database accumulated by the IUE satellite over its long operational lifetime (1978-1996) has provided the best resource for studying UV extinction (see references in Fitzpatrick 1999) and these data are the source of the UV curves shown in Figure 3.

Despite the daunting degree of variation present in Figure 3, the extinction curves do follow some rules and do not assume arbitrary appearance. Savage (1975) first demonstrated that the shape of the 2175 Å bump is well represented by a Lorentzian function. Fitzpatrick and Massa (1986) later showed that, although the strength and width of the bump vary markedly in the ISM, it always retains its Lorentzian-like form and has a nearly invariant central peak position. Fitzpatrick and Massa (1986, 1988, and 1990) also showed that the whole range of known UV extinction curves could be reproduced extremely well by a single analytical expression with a small number of free parameters. This expression consists of (1) a Lorentzian-like bump term (requiring three parameters, corresponding to bump FWHM $`\gamma `$, position $`x_0`$, and strength $`c_3`$), (2) a linear term underlying the bump and extrapolated into the far-UV (two parameters, the intercept $`c_1`$ and slope $`c_2`$), and (3) a far-UV curvature term (one parameter, a scale factor $`c_4`$). As far as I know, it is still true that all UV extinction curves measured so far can be reproduced with this parameterization scheme to a level consistent with observational error.

Cardelli, Clayton, & Mathis (1988, 1989; and see also Mathis & Cardelli 1992) were the first to demonstrate a link between UV extinction and that in the optical/IR region by showing that $`R_V`$ correlates with the level of UV extinction. Essentially, sightlines with large $`R_V`$ values tend to have low UV extinction, and vice versa. These results were important in demonstrating a degree of coherent behavior over the full wavelength range observed for interstellar extinction and for providing a simple recipe for determining a meaningful average extinction curve. I.e., since it is well-established that the mean value of $`R_V`$ in the diffuse ISM is $``$3.1, it is reasonable to define the Average Galactic Extinction Curve as that which corresponds to $`R=3.1`$. This is how the curve in Figure 2 was defined.

A comparison of the Cardelli et al. $`R_V`$ values with the UV extinction curve parameters of Fitzpatrick & Massa suggests that — while other effects are present — the primary basis of the correlation discovered by Cardelli et al. is a relationship between 1/$`R_V`$ and the UV slope component (see also Jenniskens & Greenberg 1993). Thus the general $`R_V`$-dependence of extinction can be distilled to the simple statement that when extinction curves are intrinsically steep in the optical (i.e., large 1/$`R_V`$) they remain steep in the UV (large UV slope), and vice versa. Based on this, Fitzpatrick (1999) produced a much simplified formulation of the $`R_V`$-dependence which reproduced the main effects seen by Cardelli et al.

## 4 A New Look At Old Data or “Is Galactic Extinction Really a 1-Parameter Family?”

Since the early 1990s, there has been very little new data to advance our basic understanding of the multi-wavelength behavior of Galactic interstellar extinction. The IUE database was complete by then, optical photometry had already been available for all stars with UV extinction curves, and Cardelli et al. had already exploited virtually all the IR data available for stars with UV extinction curves. This latter point is significant since the Cardelli et al. results are based on data for only 29 stars, out of the several hundred for which UV extinction curves might be derived. What has changed over the last 10 years, in my view, is the perception of the $`R_V`$-dependence discovered for Galactic extinction curves. Increasingly, Galactic extinction curves are referred to as a “1-parameter family” (with $`R_V`$ as the parameter) and the degree to which a given curve agrees with Cardelli et al.’s (or Fitzpatrick’s 1999) enunciation of the $`R_V`$-dependence used as a test of its normalcy.

The time is now right to reexamine the whole issue of the connection between IR, optical and UV extinction. The primary driver for this is the recent All-Sky Data Release from the 2MASS JHK photometric survey, which allows the determination of $`R_V`$ for nearly all the stars in the UV extinction database. A secondary motivation for me is the recent development by Derck Massa and myself of a technique for utilizing stellar atmosphere models to derive extinction curves for reddened stars, rather than relying on unreddened standard stars. The technique is described by Fitzpatrick & Massa (1999) and had been utilized in a number of studies of eclipsing binary stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (see Fitzpatrick et al. 2003 and references within). The benefits to this technique are numerous, including: 1) the elimination of the subjective process of determining the pair method standard; 2) a large reduction in mismatch error in the resultant extinction curves; 3) the ability to determine reliable extinction curves for lower E(B-V) sightlines than possible previously; and 4) the ability to determine reliable UV extinction curves for later type stars (i.e., as cool as early-A) than previously possible. The principal drawback is that the stars to which the technique can be applied must be restricted to the spectral domain in which the models have been shown to precisely and accurately reproduce the stellar SEDs. Currently this forces us to consider only main sequence stars in the late-O through early-A range.

### 4.1 The Data

Massa and I are currently producing near-IR through UV extinction curves for the several hundred stars in the IUE database which are amenable to our technique and a full description of the results is being prepared. In this article, I present the first results from a core sample of 96 stars. These consist of the stars in the atlas of Fitzpatrick & Massa (1990), plus the study by Clayton & Fitzpatrick (1987) of the Trumpler 37 region, plus a number of other sightlines not part of either of those studies, including HD27778, HD29647, HD294264, Brun 885, HD38023, HD38051, HD62542, HD210072, and HD210121. Several O stars from the Fitzpatrick & Massa (1990) sample were eliminated from consideration (HD48099, HD167771, HD199579, HD229296, Trumpler 14 #20, and CPD–59 2600) because their strongly developed C IV stellar wind lines suggested that the hydrostatic stellar atmosphere models being utilized were likely inappropriate.

The analysis technique is described in detail in the references listed above. In brief, it consists of modeling the observed stellar SEDs by combining model atmosphere fluxes with a flexible description of the shape of the IR-through-UV extinction curve. The output of the fit includes the stellar properties (potentially $`T_{eff}`$, $`\mathrm{log}g`$, \[m/H\], and $`v_{microturb}`$) and the set of parameters which describe the shape of the extinction curve. In the IR, at wavelengths longward of 1 $`\mu `$m, we assume the extinction to follow a power law form given by $`A_\lambda /E(BV)=K\times \lambda ^\alpha `$, where both the scale factor K and the exponent $`\alpha `$ may be determined by the fit. In the UV, at wavelengths shortward of 2700 Å, we adopt the 6-parameter fitting function from Fitzpatrick & Massa (1990) described in §3 above. All 6 parameters are determined by the fit. The UV and IR regions are linked by a cubic spline interpolation passing through optical anchor points located near the $`V`$, $`B`$, and $`U`$ effective wavelengths. The values of these 3 spline points are strongly constrained by the optical photometry, the value of $`R_V`$, and the normalization imposed on the curves, and are all determined by the fit, along with $`R_V`$ itself. The 6-parameter UV fitting function is restricted to $`\lambda <2700`$ Å because the assumption of a linear component underlying the bump begins to breakdown towards longer wavelengths. This effect can be seen (although it was not recognized at the time) in Figure 2 of Fitzpatrick & Massa (1988).

Our primary datasets are IUE spectrophotometry in the UV, 2MASS photometry in the IR, and UBV and $`uvby\beta `$ photometry in the optical. We use Kurucz’s ATLAS9 atmosphere models to represent the surface fluxes of the B stars and the Lanz & Hubeny (2003) non-LTE models for the O stars.

Figure 4 shows examples of best-fitting SED models for five of the stars in the current sample. The fitting procedure is clearly capable of reproducing the observed SEDs at a level consistent with observational error. Figure 5 shows the extinction curves derived from the SED fits for 11 of the stars, including those in Figure 4. (The parameterized versions of whole set of 96 extinction curves were already shown in Figure 3.) The full set of SED fitting results and extinction curves will be published by Fitzpatrick & Massa (in preparation).

### 4.2 The Extinction Results

The primary results for the 96-star core sample are illustrated in Figures 6 through 11. While a full analysis of these data is yet to be performed, the major highlights can be summarized briefly:

$``$ The IR extinction (i.e., at $`\lambda `$ $`>`$ $``$1 $`\mu `$m) is well-represented by a power law of the form

$$A_\lambda /E(BV)=k\times \lambda ^\alpha $$

with a universal exponent $`\alpha =1.84`$ as suggested by Whittet (1992). The IR scale factor $`k`$ varies smoothly and linearly with $`R_V`$, which ranges from $``$2.1 to $``$5.6 in the current sample. See Figure 6.

$``$ In the UV, the position and FWHM of the 2175 Å bump are uncorrelated, consistent with the results of Fitzpatrick & Massa (1986). See Figure 7. The median value of the bump position for the core sample 4.59015 $`\mu `$m<sup>-1</sup> (2178.6 Å) with a sample standard deviation of 0.020 $`\mu `$m<sup>-1</sup>. The median value of the FWHM is 0.92 $`\mu `$m<sup>-1</sup> with a sample standard deviation of 0.11 $`\mu `$m<sup>-1</sup>.

$``$ In the UV, the FWHM of the 2175 Å bump appears related to the strength of the nonlinear far-UV curvature, in the sense that broad bumps tend to be associated with large curvature. See Figure 8. This relationship is consistent with that presented by Fitzpatrick & Massa (1988).

$``$ In the UV, the slope and intercept of the linear extinction underlying the bump are well-correlated, consistent with the results of Fitzpatrick & Massa (1988). See Figure 9.

$``$ The slope of the UV linear component and the value of $`R_V`$ are related: curves with large $`R_V`$ tend to have flat UV slopes and curves with small $`R_V`$ tend to have steep slopes. See the lefthand panel in Figure 10. This is the basis of the relationship found by Cardelli et al. (1989) between UV and optical/IR extinction. Note that plots of $`R_V`$ directly against the level of extinction in the UV, e.g., $`R_{V}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}`$ versus E(1250–V)/E(B–V), look essentially identical to the lefthand panel in Figure 10, exhibiting the same degree of scatter.

$``$ There is a weak relationship between the strength of the far-UV curvature and the value of $`R_V`$: for $`R_V`$ $`<`$ $``$3.3 the curvature tends to increase with decreasing $`R_V`$, for $`R_V`$ $`>`$ $``$3.3 there is no apparent trend. See the right panel in Figure 10.

$``$ The strength of the 2175 Å bump, as measured in curves normalized by E(B–V), varies over a wide range, but displays a distinct trend: the strongest bumps are found for curves with intermediate levels of far-UV extinction and the bump weakens progressively as the far-UV extinction strays in either direction from the intermediate values. See Figure 11. Since the level of far-UV extinction is related to $`R_V`$, this means that, in general, weak bumps are found along high-$`R_V`$ and low-$`R_V`$ sightlines, while strong bumps occur along medium-$`R_V`$ sightlines.

The reader has undoubtedly noticed that the relationships among the various quantities in Figures 6 through 11 are not particularly impressive! The only true correlations are those between $`k`$ and $`R_V`$ in the optical/IR domain and between $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ in the UV domain. The trends seen among the other quantities are ill-defined — although, I believe, undoubtedly real — and characterized by an intrinsic scatter much larger than observational errors.

My primary conclusion derived from these data is that IR-through-UV Galactic extinction curves should not be considered as a simple 1-parameter family, whether characterized by $`R_V`$ or any other quantity. While it is straightforward to create a family of curves which follow the trends established in Figures 6 through 11 — and this family is shown in Figures 12 and 13 — there are actually very few “real” extinction curves which agree in detail with these idealized forms. This follows, but extends, the conclusion of Cardelli et al. (1989) that real deviations from the “mean law” exist — most curves actually deviate from the mean! Twenty years ago Massa et al. (1983) made the comment that “peculiar extinction is common,” referring to the wide range of observed curve types. I think this statement should be amended to read “normal extinction is common,” with the understanding that “normal” actually covers a lot of territory! The truly peculiar curves, i.e., those which really stand out from the crowd in Figures 6 through 11, are actually rather rare.

### 4.3 The Interpretation

The data presented above raise a number of interesting issues which, as an observer, I feel no obligation to either interpret or understand. However there are a small number of rather obvious points and suggestions which might help illuminate some of the trends seen.

$``$ Size Distribution Matters… The basic structure and the multiwavelength coherence seen in the IR-through-UV curves are determined primarily by 1) the IR power law (Figure 6), 2) the UV linear slope vs. linear intercept correlation (Figure 9), and 3) the relation between $`R_V`$ and the UV slope (Figure 10). These three combine such that — as can be seen clearly in Figure 13 — large-$`R_V`$ curves roll over in the optical and flatten out in the near-UV while small-$`R_V`$ curves remain steep throughout the optical and into the UV. Since basic theoretical expectations (e.g., see Spitzer 1978, Fig. 7.1) show that extinction becomes grey in the regime where grains are large compared to the photon wavelengths, the observations imply that the connection between UV and IR extinction first noted by Cardelli et al. (1988, 1989) is simply a product of the grain size distribution. The large-$`R_V`$ curves reflect sightlines with larger-than-typical mean grain sizes, while the small-$`R_V`$ sightlines reflect smaller-than-typical mean grain sizes. If the relationship between $`R_V`$ and UV extinction were a tight correlation, then we might be in the uncomfortable position of having to explain a remarkable uniformity in the form of the grain size distribution among widely varying sightlines. However, the observed scatter in Figure 10 probably indicates that Nature actually varies both the high- and low-end size cutoffs and the shape of the grain size distribution, producing a range in UV slopes for the same value of $`R_V`$, and a range of $`R_V`$’s for the same UV slope.

$``$ The Weak Bumps I… The trend of weakening 2175 Å bump with increasing normalized far-UV extinction (and, thus, decreasing $`R_V`$) seen in Figure 11 might also be attributable to the grain size distribution. Because of the intrinsic steepness of their extinction in the optical region, grain populations which produce the high far-UV (low $`R_V`$) curves are very efficient producers of the optical color excess E(B–V). In addition, such populations have a larger mean ratio of grain surface area (which is important for producing extinction) to grain mass, due to their smaller-than-average size distribution. As a result of these two effects, the grain populations which produce low $`R_V`$ extinction probably have a much larger ratio of E(B–V) per unit grain mass than high $`R_V`$ populations. Since we normalize the curves by E(B–V) it is possible that the grain populations which produce the steep, “weak-bumped” curves could actually have the same average bump strength per unit grain mass as in other sightlines. I.e., the apparent weakness of the bump could be an artifact of the normalization. Testing this will require measuring the bump strength relative to some absolute measure of the amount of grain material present along a line of sight, rather than to E(B–V).

$``$ The Weak Bumps II… The weakening of the bump in the flattest (highest $`R_V`$) extinction curves requires a different explanation than suggested above for the steepest curves. The highest $`R_V`$ curves in the current sample are all associated with sightlines close to the Orion Trapezium region or towards the young O star Herschel 36. The extinction-producing material is likely freshly exposed to the interstellar radiation field, having only recently been deeply embedded in star-forming molecular clouds. By virtue of their opacity, we know essentially nothing about the UV extinction properties in such regions. It is not possible to say if the weak bumps observed in the large-$`R_V`$ sightlines are typical of the opaque molecular regions, or are a result of some specific physical processes operating in their environments.

$``$ Beyond the Milky Way… Having had a long-standing interest in the problem, I cannot resist violating the main constraint on this article and commenting on extinction outside the Milky Way galaxy — in the Magellanic Clouds, to be specific. The steep, weak-bumped extinction curves of the Large Cloud (LMC) and the really steep, really weak-bumped curves of the Small Cloud (SMC) have been a puzzle for 20 years. Observationally, the situation hasn’t changed much (qualitatively, at least) since I talked about these galaxies at the Santa Clara dust meeting in 1988. Theoretically, the idea that these curves are somehow the result of the progressively lower metal abundances of the LMC and SMC has been on the table — but unverified — since the first observations.

Figure 14 shows a comparison between extinction curves from the Galactic “family” featured in Figures 12 and 13 and the Magellanic Clouds. The very steep SMC curve has no known Galactic counterparts but — as seen in the figure — it represents only a slight extrapolation (to $`R1.9`$) of the trends shown in Figures 10 and 11. The only notable discrepancies in the comparison are in the strength of the LMC bumps, which are each $``$30% weaker than in the corresponding Galactic curves.

The results in Figure 14 are very suggestive and lead to an alternate explanation for Magellanic Cloud extinction: the general properties of the LMC and SMC curves merely reflect the grain size distributions along their sightlines and aren’t necessarily special products of alien extra-Galactic environments. This is an appealingly simple idea, and also provides a straightforward explanation for the presence of sightlines in both galaxies which exhibit Galactic-like extinction: these are merely sightlines along which the mean grain size is similar to that along typical Galactic sightlines. There may well be some galaxy-specific details in the curves, perhaps the slightly weak LMC bumps, but, overall, these curves do not stand out in a qualitative sense from the Galactic sample.

If this suggestion is correct then the $`R_V`$ values found in these galaxies should be low as compared with the Galactic mean. This is not obviously the current observational situation (e.g., see the recent results of Gordon et al. 2003) but I believe that $`R_V`$ is so difficult to measure reliably for the lightly-reddened supergiants observed in the Clouds that the current observations do not at all rule out the grain-size explanation for Magellanic Cloud extinction. Note that Rodrigues et al. (1997) have already reached the conclusion, based on polarization and other data, that SMC grains are smaller than Galactic grains — except along the SMC sightline which exhibits Galactic-like UV extinction. In addition, a number of authors have modeled Magellanic Cloud extinction and shown that modified grain size distributions provide a plausible explanation for the observed curves (e.g., Pei 1992; Weingartner & Draine 2001; Clayton et al. 2003a). The contribution here is simply to point out that Magellanic Cloud extinction is consistent in general with trends observed along Galactic sightlines where the mean grain size is probably smaller-than-average.

$``$ Maybe It’s Better Than It Looks… Finally, it is possible that a number of effects conspire to make the various extinction properties appear less correlated with each other than they really are. I have screened the sample for obvious stellar peculiarities, which might distort the shape of the derived curves, but more difficult-to-diagnose problems may still exist for some curves. In addition, significant circumstellar material might be present in the vicinity of some of the stars, resulting in light scattered into the line of sight. Both these issues can be addressed by more detailed examination of the stellar data. Lastly, there is little doubt that some of the observed scatter arises because some sightlines traverse multiple regions of greatly different dust grain properties, e.g., a $`R_V=2.5`$ region and a $`R_V=4.5`$ region. Such superpositions will distort correlations between extinction properties which are related in an intrinsically non-linear way, as in Figures 10 and 11, but will not distort intrinsically linear correlations, as in Figures 6 and 9. For example, even if the strength of the 2175 Å bump were perfectly correlated with the far-UV extinction in the manner suggested by the dotted diagonal lines in Figure 11, the region between the diagonals would still be filled-in as a result of composite sightlines. With our larger sample of curves, Massa and I will attempt to identify composite sightlines and see if the some of the extinction properties are intrinsically better-related that first glance suggests.

## 5 Other Extinction Issues

By using virtually all my allotted space (and available energy!) concentrating on the issue of the “1-parameter family” I have slighted much recent work and many other researchers working hard on Galactic extinction-related issues. I cannot correct this fault in the small amount of remaining space, but do want to conclude by noting some currently active areas of investigation:

$``$ Far-UV Extinction… Measurements of extinction in the 1150–912 Å region are very difficult due the presence of the Lyman-series absorption lines of H I and the Lyman- and Werner-series absorption bands of $`H_2`$. In addition, heavy line-blanketing in the spectra of the early-type stars required for extinction measurements make the results very sensitive to spectral mismatch error. Recent results have been published by Hutchings & Giasson (2001), based on FUSE data, and Sasseen et al. (2002) based on ORPHEUS data. At this point, the far-UV extinction appears to be a smooth extrapolation of the rise seen in the mid-UV range, with no sign of a turnover. Much work remains to be done in this wavelength range.

$``$ Extinction Features… The 2175 Å bump is the strongest observed extinction feature. Other dust-related spectroscopic features include the optical Diffuse Interstellar Bands and the IR solid-state emission and absorption bands. Clayton et al. (2003b) recently performed a detailed search in the UV for other extinction-related features, particularly as might be associated with absorption by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. They found no evidence for such features down to a 3$`\sigma `$ detection limit of 0.02$`A_V`$. If these results (based on two lines of sight) are the norm, then UV extinction curves are evidently very, very smooth.

The optical and near-IR spectral regions would benefit from a similar study. For years there have been tantalizing hints of structure in the $`V`$ band region, known as the “Very Broad Structure” or “VBS” (van Breda & Whittet 1982; Bastiaansen 1992) but no definitive characterization of its properties. This lack of data on an apparently observationally-accessible portion of the spectrum is undoubtedly due the inherent difficulties in obtaining precise ground-based spectrophotometry.

$``$ Morphology… Despite many years of study, our understanding of extinction and its relationship with dust grain properties and environments still relies heavily on simple morphological investigations, e.g., Figures 6–11 of this paper. Such studies also include expanding the range of interstellar environments in which extinction is measured, as well as searching for relationships between extinction and other measurable quantities in the ISM. Recent work along these lines includes the Clayton, Gordon, & Wolff (2000) study of low density sightlines in the Milky Way and comparisons between the extinction properties along specific sightlines and their molecular content (Burgh et al 2000; Rachford et al. 2002).

By the time the next interstellar dust meeting rolls around, it is likely that studies such as these few examples listed above will have greatly improved our ability to characterize extinction as a function of interstellar environment and provided valuable insight into the natures of interstellar grains and the processes which modify them.