EXTINCTION MAP OF CHAMELEON-I MOLECULAR CLOUD WITH DENIS STAR COUNTS

Massive, large scale star counts in the J (1.25 mu m) band provided by the Deep Near Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky (DENIS) are used fo r the first time to draw out an extinction map of the Chamaeleon I dar k cloud. We derived a 2' resolution map of the cloud from J star count s within an area of 1.5 degrees x 3 degrees around the centre of the c loud using an adaptive grid method and applying a wavelet decompositio n. Possible contaminating young stellar objects within the cloud are r emoved, although they are shown to have a negligible effect on the cou nts. A comparison of our extinction map with the cold contribution of the IRAS 100 mu m emission shows an almost perfect matching. It is sho wn that J star counts supersede optical counts on Schmidt plate where A(V) > 4.