The AKARI 9 and 18 µm diffuse maps reveal the all-sky distribution of the interstellar medium with relatively high spatial resolution of ∼6 . The zodiacal light is a dominant foreground component in the mid-infrared. Thus, removal of the zodiacal light is a critical issue to study low surface brightness Galactic diffuse emission. We carried out modeling of the zodiacal light based on the Kelsall model which is constructed from the COBE data. In the previous study, only a time-varying component of the zodiacal light brightness was used for determination of the model parameters. However, there remains a residual component of the zodiacal light around the ecliptic plane even after removal with the model. Therefore, instead of using a time-varying component, we use the absolute brightness of the zodiacal light and we find that the new model can better remove the residual component. As a result, the best-fit model parameters are changed from those in the previous study. We discuss the properties of the zodiacal light based on our new result.
We are creating all-sky diffuse maps from the AKARI mid-infrared survey data with the two photometric bands centered at wavelengths of 9 and 18 µm. The AKARI mid-infrared diffuse maps achieve higher spatial resolution and higher sensitivity than the IRAS maps. In particular, the 9 µm data are unique resources as an all-sky tracer of the emission of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). However, the original data suffer many artifacts. Thus, we have been developing correction methods. Among them, we have recently improved correction methods for the non-linearity and the reset anomaly of the detector response. These corrections successfully reduce the artifact level down to 0.1 MJy sr −1 on average, which is essential for discussion on faint extended emission (e.g., the Galactic PAH emission). We have also made progress in the subtraction of the scattered light caused in the camera optics. We plan to release the improved diffuse maps to the public within a year.
We plan to produce a faint source catalogue from the AKARI mid-infrared (IR) all-sky diffuse maps. In the publicly-available AKARI mid-IR point source catalogue (PSC), sources were extracted from singlescan images, and confirmed by using the other scan images. By stacking multiple scan images, we can detect fainter sources which are not listed in the PSC. We optimized the source extraction process using a 6• × 6• area around the star-forming region, Cepheus B. Then, we divided the all-sky data into three seasonal images, and checked the positions and the fluxes of the detected sources on the images. As a result, our new source extraction method works well; 90% of the sources are also identified in the WISE catalogue. In this method, we obtain the detection limit twice deeper than that of the PSC. The number of sources increases by a factor of 2, as compared with the PSC.
We present a comparative study of CO and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission toward a region including the massive star-forming regions of NGC 6334 and NGC 6357. We use the NANTEN 12 CO(J=1-0) data and the AKARI 9 µm All-Sky diffuse map in order to evaluate the calibration accuracy of the AKARI data. We confirm that the overall CO distribution shows a good spatial correspondence with the PAH emission, and their intensities exhibit a good power-law correlation with a spatial resolution down to 4 ′ over the region of 10 • ×10• . We also reveal poorer correlation for small scale structures between the two quantities toward NGC 6357, due to strong UV radiation from local sources. Larger scatter in the correlation toward NGC 6357 indicates higher ionization degree and/or PAH excitation than that of NGC 6334.
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