Do we need a new family of optical-NIR extinction laws?

Abstract

I consider whether we can significantly improve the Cardelli et al. (1989) family of extinction laws using new data and techniques. There are six different aspects that need to be treated: The use of monochromatic quantities, the three different wavelength regimes (NIR, optical and UV), the sample, and the photometric calibration. Excluding the behavior in the NIR and UV, I discuss the other four aspects and propose a new family of extinction laws derived from VLT/FLAMES and HST/WFC3 data.