Benchmarking Differential Reddening in Front of Globular Clusters

Interstellar extinction is a major obstacle in determining accurate stellar parameters from photometry near the Galactic disk. It is especially true for globular clusters at low galactic latitudes, which suffer from significant amounts of spatially variable reddening. Although differential reddening maps are available for tens of clusters, establishing and validating the absolute zero-point of relative maps is a challenge. In this study, we present a new approach to determine and evaluate absolute reddening zero-points for Galactic globular clusters by combining 3D reddening maps with Gaia DR3 RR Lyrae data. As a first case study, we investigate the low-latitude globular cluster M9. We compare the Gaia photometry and color data of the cluster member RR Lyrae stars to field RR Lyrae stars with accurate parallaxes and whose photometric metallicities match that of M9, as well as to theoretical models. We calculate the dereddened Gaia colors for the M9 stars based on three zero points. We confirm that the original SFD map by D. J. Schlegel et al. (1998) appears to be overcorrecting the reddening for at least some RR Lyrae stars, albeit not excessively. In contrast, the 3D Bayestar map and the recalibrated version of the SFD map provide physically plausible reddenings, which we accept as lower and upper limits for M9, respectively. Our results provide a physically motivated reddening range for M9 and outline a methodology that can be directly extended to other globular clusters that are accessible to the Gaia mission, and to other multicolor sky surveys, such as the Rubin Observatory.