Related papers: Sources of zodiacal dust
We have used the Keck I telescope to image at 11.7 microns and 17.9 microns the dust emission around zeta Lep, a main sequence A-type star at 21.5 pc from the Sun with an infrared excess. The excess is at most marginally resolved at 17.9…
We present a short review of the impact regime experienced by the terrestrial planets within our own Solar system, describing the three populations of potentially hazardous objects which move on orbits that take them through the inner Solar…
(Abridged) Using an efficient computational approach, we have reconstructed the structure of the dust cloud in the Solar system between 0.5 and 100 AU produced by the Kuiper belt objects. Our simulations offer a 3-D physical model of the…
Exozodiacal dust is warm or hot dust found in the inner regions of planetary systems orbiting main sequence stars, in or around their habitable zones. The dust can be the most luminous component of extrasolar planetary systems, but…
White dwarfs have atmospheres that are expected to consist nearly entirely of hydrogen and helium, since heavier elements will sink out of sight on short timescales. However, observations have revealed atmospheric pollution by heavier…
For exoplanet direct detection mission concepts such as Terrestrial Planet Finder or Exoplanet Probe, light from the exozodiacal dust tends to obscure any exoplanets present in the image. Data analysis methods to identify point sources…
We review the development of dust science from the first ground-based astronomical observations of dust in space to compositional analysis of individual dust particles and their source objects. A multitude of observational techniques is…
In this work, two aspects of the chemical evolution of 4He in the Galaxy are considered on the basis of a sample of disk planetary nebulae (PN). First, an application of corrections owing to the contamination of 4He from the evolution of…
We present the results of millimeter and centimeter continuum observations, made with the IRAM 30m telescope and the VLA, toward a sample of 11 luminous IRAS sources classified as high-mass protostellar object candidates. We find 1.2 mm…
Atmospheric compositions offer valuable clues to planetary formation and evolution. Jupiter has been the most well-studied giant planet in terms of its atmosphere; however, the origin of the Jovian atmospheric composition remains a puzzle…
We report several results related to the dynamical evolution of dust produced in the Kuiper Belt (KB). We show that its particle size frequency distribution in space is greatly changed from the distribution at production, as a results of…
New infrared spectra of 33 Galactic carbon stars from FORCAST on SOFIA reveal strong connections between stellar pulsations and the dust and molecular chemistry in their circumstellar shells. A sharp boundary in overall dust content, which…
We identify different dust features in our compilation of infrared spectra for 267 planetary nebulae (PNe) from the Spitzer, ISO, and IRAS telescopes. We classify 209 objects according to their dust type: mixed dust (MD), oxygen-rich dust…
Dust in debris disks is produced by colliding or evaporating planetesimals, remnants of the planet formation process. Warm dust disks, known by their emission at < 24 micron, are rare (4% of FGK main sequence stars) and especially…
A kinky and clumpy ringlet shares orbit with the moon Pan in the center of the 320-km wide Encke gap in Saturn's rings (Porco et al., 2005). The ringlet is mainly composed of micron-sized particles (Showalter, 1991, Hedman et al., 2011),…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…
White dwarfs that have accreted rocky planetary bodies provide unique insights regarding the bulk composition of exoplanetary material. The analysis presented here uses observed white dwarf atmospheric abundances to constrain both where in…
The Spitzer Space Telescope was used to study the mid-infrared to far-infrared properties of NGC 300, and to compare dust emission to Halpha to elucidate the heating of the ISM and the star formation cycle at scales < 100 pc. The new data…
We have evaluated the rate at which the asteroid belt is losing material, and how it splits between macroscopic bodies and meteoritic dust. The mass loss process is due to the injection of asteroid fragments into unstable dynamical regions,…
Ultraviolet spectra of stars recorded by orbiting observatories since the 1970's have revealed absorption features produced by atoms in their favored ionization stages in the neutral ISM of our Galaxy. Most elements show abundances relative…