Identification of red clump giants by 2MASS photometric data

The infrared J, K-photometry of the 2MASS catalog has been used to identify red clump giants as well as to determine the distances to them and the interstellar extinction. Color-magnitude diagrams plotted for ten sky regions situated mostly near the galactic plane have been analyzed. Applying the maximum likelihood technique, the parameters of distribution of a number of red clump giants over their J-K color index have been determined; on the basis of these parameters, stars of this type to K = 11 ^m have been identified. According to the reddening of identified stars, the K-band extinction in the direction of the regions under study has been estimated. The value of the extinction and its variation with galactic latitude and longitude are in agreement with the extinction calculated by the model of Arenou et al.