In this paper a fictitious domain method is used to study the local heat transfer from an isothermal circular cylinder at low to moderate Reynolds numbers in order to provide a high quality correlation for the calculation of the local Nusselt numbers. A trigonometric series with 13 coefficients is found to best describe the local Nusselt number curves. A 5th order 2D polynomial in terms of Reynolds and Prandtl numbers is then used to provide a correlation for each of the 13 coefficients. A very high resolution database consisting of 25 Reynolds numbers from 10 to 250 in increments of 10, and 24 Prandtl numbers from 0.1 to 40 comprising a total of 600 simulations is used for the modeling. In addition to the 5th order polynomials cubic interpolants are also used to provide highly accurate fits. The maximum error in calculating the average Nusselt number is always less that 2.5% for the cubic interpolants and is 10% maximum for the 5th order polynomials. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.