@article{b36c35c622594c319605d8cd945dc22a,
title = "Milky Way demographics with the VVV survey: II. Color transformations and near-infrared photometry for 136 million stars in the southern Galactic disk",
abstract = "The new multi-epoch near-infrared VISTA Variables in the V{\'i}a L{\'a}ctea (VVV) survey is sampling 562 deg2 of the Galactic bulge and adjacent regions of the disk. Accurate astrometry established for the region surveyed allows the VVV data to be merged with overlapping surveys (e.g., GLIMPSE, WISE, 2MASS, etc.), thereby enabling the construction of longer baseline spectral energy distributions for astronomical targets. However, in order to maximize use of the VVV data, a set of transformation equations are required to place the VVV JHKs photometry onto the 2MASS system. The impetus for this work is to develop those transformations via a comparison of 2MASS targets in 152 VVV fields sampling the Galactic disk. The transformation coefficients derived exhibit a reliance on variables such as extinction. The transformed data were subsequently employed to establish a mean reddening law of EJ-H/EH-Ks = 2.13 ± 0.04, which is the most precise determination to date and merely emphasizes the pertinence of the VVV data for determining such important parameters.",
keywords = "Galaxy: disk, Galaxy: stellar content, Galaxy: structure, Infrared: stars, Surveys",
author = "M. Soto and R. Barb{\'a} and G. Gunthardt and D. Minniti and P. Lucas and D. Majaess and M. Irwin and Emerson, {J. P.} and E. Gonzalez-Solares and M. Hempel and Saito, {R. K.} and S. Gurovich and A. Roman-Lopes and C. Moni-Bidin and Santucho, {M. V.} and J. Borissova and R. Kurtev and I. Toledo and D. Geisler and M. Dominguez and Beamin, {J. C.}",
note = "Funding Information: M.S. acknowledges support by Fondecyt project No. 3110188 and Comit{\'e} Mixto ESO- Chile. We gratefully acknowledge use of data from the ESO Public Survey programme ID 179.B-2002 taken with the VISTA telescope, data products from the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit, and funding from the FONDAP Center for Astrophysics 15010003, the BASAL CATA Center for Astrophysics and Associated Technologies PFB-06, the MILENIO Milky Way Millennium Nucleus from the Ministry of Economys ICM grant P07-021-F. R.K.S. and D.M. acknowledge financial support from CONICYT through Gemini Project No. 32080016 and by Proyecto FONDECYT Regular No. 1090213. Support for R.K.S. is provided by the Ministry for the Economy, Development, and Tourism{\textquoteright}s Programa Iniciativa Cient{\'i}fica Milenio through grant P07-021-F, awarded to The Milky Way Millennium Nucleus. J.B. is supported by FONDECYT No. 1120601. R.K. acknowledges support from Proyecto FONDECYT Regular No. 1130140 and Centro de Astrof{\'i}sica de Valpara{\'i}so. A.R.L. thanks partial financial support from DIULS project CDI12141. RB thanks financial support from FONDECYT Regular No. 1120668. This material is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1066293 and the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics.",
year = "2013",
doi = "10.1051/0004-6361/201220046",
language = "English",
volume = "552",
journal = "Astronomy and Astrophysics",
issn = "0004-6361",
publisher = "EDP Sciences",
}