Extending the extinction law in 30 Doradus to the infrared with JWST

Abstract

We measured the extinction law in the 30 Dor star formation region in the Large Magellanic Cloud using Early Release Observations (EROs) taken with Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on board the JWST, thereby extending previous studies carried out with the Hubble Space Telescope to the infrared. We used red clump stars to derive the direction of the reddening vector in twelve bands and we present the extinction law in this massive star forming region from 0.3 to 4.7 µm. At wavelengths longer than 1 µm, we find a ratio of total and selective extinction twice as high as in the diffuse Milky Way interstellar medium and a change in the relative slope from the optical to the infrared domain. Additionally, we derive an infrared extinction map and find that extinction closely follows the structure of the highly embedded regions of 30 Dor.