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The Milky Way (MW) remains a primary laboratory for understanding thestructure and evolution of spiral galaxies, but typically we are denied clearviews of MW stellar populations at low Galactic latitudes because of extinctionby interstellar dust. However, the combination of 2MASS near-infrared (NIR) andSpitzer-IRAC mid-infrared (MIR) photometry enables a powerful method fordetermining the line of sight reddening to any star: the sampled wavelengthslie in the Rayleigh-Jeans part of the spectral energy distribution of moststars, where, to first order, all stars have essentially the same intrinsiccolor. Thus, changes in stellar NIR-MIR colors due to interstellar reddeningare readily apparent, and (under an assumed extinction law) the observed colorsand magnitudes of stars can be easily and accurately restored to theirintrinsic values, greatly increasing their usefulness for Galactic structurestudies. In this paper we explore this "Rayleigh-Jeans Color Excess" (RJCE)method and demonstrate that use of even a simple variant of the RJCE methodbased on a single reference color, (H-[4.5um]), can rather accurately removedust effects from previously uninterpretable 2MASS color-magnitude diagrams ofstars in fields along the heavily reddened Galactic mid-plane, with results farsuperior to those derived from application of other dereddening methods. Wealso show that "total" Galactic midplane extinction looks rather different fromthat predicted using 100um emission maps from the IRAS/ISSA and COBE/DIRBEinstruments as presented by Schlegel et al. Instead, the Galactic mid-planeextinction strongly resembles the distribution of 13-CO (J=1->0) emission.Future papers will focus on refining the RJCE method and applying the techniqueto understand better not only dust and its distribution, but the distributionof stars intermixed with the dust in the low-latitude Galaxy.

Lifting the Dusty Veil With Near- and Mid-Infrared Photometry: I. Description and Applications of the Rayleigh-Jeans Color Excess Method