Near-infrared extinction with discretised stellar colours

Abstract: Several methods exist to convert near-infrared (NIR) stellar observations into extinction maps. We present a new method based on NIR multiband observations. The method uses a discretised version of the distribution of intrinsic stellar colours. A number of variations of the basic method are tested, and the results are compared to NICER calculations. When photometric errors are large, the results are close to those of NICER method but some advantages can be seen when the distribution of intrinsic colours cannot be described well with a single covariance matrix. A priori information about relative column density variations at sub-beam scales can result in a significant increase in accuracy. The results may be further improved by considering the magnitude dependence of the intrinsic colours. Thus, the new methods are useful mostly when photometric errors are small, the distribution of intrinsic colours is well known, or one has prior knowledge of the small-scale structures.