The interstellar extinction law toward the Galactic center. II.

We have determined the ratios of total to selective extinction directly from observations in the optical V band and near-infrared J band toward the Galactic center. The OGLE ( Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) Galactic bulge fields have been observed with the SIRIUS camera on the Infrared Survey Facility telescope, and we obtain A(V)/EV-J = 1.251 +/- 0.014 and A(J)/EV-J = 0.225 +/- 0.007. From these ratios, we derive A(J)/A(V) = 0.188 +/- 0.005; combining this with the near-infrared extinction ratios obtained in Paper I for more reddened fields near the Galactic center, we obtain A(V):A(J):A(H):A(Ks) = 1: 0.188:0.108:0.062, which implies steeply declining extinction toward longer wavelengths. In particular, it is striking that the K-s-band extinction is approximate to 1/16 the visual extinction A(V), much smaller than the 1/10 usually employed.