The Near-IR Extinction Law

We show that the power-law slope of the near-IR extinction law is significantly steeper than previously thought. Simulated colour-colour diagrams including a stellar population synthesis, realistic extinction distribution along the line-of-sight and synthesis through the filter profiles are compared to data from the UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey. The slope of extinction with wavelength is found to be 2.14±0.05 for total visual extinctions up to about 25 magnitudes and for a number of locations.