A COMPLETE Look at The Use of IRAS Emission Maps to Estimate Extinction and Dust Temperature

We have created new dust temperature and column density maps of Perseus, Ophiuchus and Serpens using 60 and 100 micron data from the IRIS recalibration of IRAS data. We describe an optimized method for finding the dust temperature, emissivity spectral index, and optical depth using optical and NIR extinction maps. The creation of these temperature and extinction maps (covering tens of square degrees of molecular clouds) is one of the first results from the ongoing COordinated Molecular Probe Line Extinction Thermal Emission (COMPLETE) Survey of Star Forming regions. However, while the extinctions derived from the IRIS emission maps are globally accurate, we warn that FIR emission is not a good proxy for extinction on the scale of one pixel (5').