Dust in the outskirts of M31 and M33
  M31 and M33 serve as ideal places to study distributions of dust in the
outskirts of spiral galaxies. In this letter, using about 0.2 million stars
selected from the LAMOST data and combining precise photometry and parallaxes
from the Gaia DR2, we have constructed a two-dimensional foreground dust
reddening map towards the M31 and M33 region ($111.2{\deg} {\le} gl {\le}
136.2{\deg}, -36.5{\deg} {\le} gb {\le} -16.5{\deg}$). The map has a typical
spatial resolution of about 12 arc-minute and precision of 0.01 mag. The
complex structure of dust clouds towards the M31 is revealed. By carefully
removing the foreground extinction from the dust reddening map of Schlegel et
al. (1998), we thus have obtained a residual map to study dust distributions in
the outskirts of M31 and M33. A large amount of dust is detected in the M31
halo out to a distance of over 100 kpc. Dust in the M31 disk is found to extend
out to about 2.5 times its optical radius, whose distribution is consistent
with either an exponential disk of scale length of 7.2 kpc or two disks with
scale length of 11.1 kpc within its optical radius and 18.3 kpc beyond its
optical radius. Dust in the disk of M33 is also found to extend out to about
2.5 times its optical radius, its distribution beyond one optical radius is
consistent with an exponential disk of scale length of 5.6 kpc. Our results
provide new clues on the distributions and cycling of dust in galaxies.
