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Gravitational microlensing has become a mature technique for discovering small gravitational lenses in the Universe which are otherwise beyond our detection limits. Similarly, plasma microlensing can help us explore cosmic plasma lenses.…
Interstellar dust grains are often aligned. If the grain alignment direction varies along the line of sight, the thermal emission becomes circularly-polarized. In the diffuse interstellar medium, the circular polarization at far-infrared…
We study an undocumented large translucent cloud, detected by means of its enhanced radiation on the SHASSA (Southern H-Alpha Sky Survey Atlas) survey. We consider whether its excess surface brightness can be explained by light scattered…
Although diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) were discovered over 100 years ago, for most of them, their origins are still unknown. Investigation on the correlations between different DIBs is an important way to study the behavior and…
We have derived the column densities of heavy elements in three gamma-ray burst (GRB) optical transients, associated with the circumburst or interstellar medium (ISM) of the host galaxy. In comparison with the same elements observed in…
Dust particles in space may appear as clusters of individual grains. The morphology of these clusters could be of a fractal or more compact nature. To investigate how the cluster morphology influences the calculated extinction of different…
We consider the observation of diffuse halos of light around the discs of spiral galaxies, as a probe of the interaction cross section between Dark Matter and photons. Using the galaxy M101 as an example, we show that for a scattering cross…
The presence of dusty debris around main sequence stars denotes the existence of planetary systems. Such debris disks are often identified by the presence of excess continuum emission at infrared and (sub-)millimetre wavelengths, with…
Scintillation spectra of some pulsars have suggested the existence of $\lesssim$ AU scale density structures in the ionized interstellar medium, whose astrophysical correspondence is still a mystery. The detailed study of Brisken et al.…
Scattering by interstellar dust grains can produce time variable X-ray halos around gamma-ray bursts (GRB). In particular, an X-ray expanding ring is expected when a short pulse of X-ray radiation is scattered by a narrow layer of dust in…
Recently discovered scattered light at 3-5 $\mu$m from low-mass cores (so-called "coreshine") reveals the presence of grains around 1 $\mu$m, which is larger than the grains found in the low-density interstellar medium. But only about half…
The pervasive interstellar dust grains provide significant insights to understand the formation and evolution of the stars, planetary systems, and the galaxies, and may harbor the building blocks of life. One of the most effective way to…
Debris discs are dusty belts of planetesimals around main-sequence stars, similar to the asteroid and Kuiper belts in our solar system. The planetesimals cannot be observed directly, yet they produce detectable dust in mutual collisions.…
The excess emission seen in spectral energy distributions (SEDs) is commonly used to infer the properties of the emitting circumstellar dust in protoplanetary and debris discs. Most notably, dust size distributions and details of the…
The abundance of both amorphous and crystalline silicates in very small grains is limited by the fact that the 10 micron silicate emission feature is not detected in the diffuse ISM. On the basis of the observed IR emission spectrum for the…
The disturbance of the transmission of light through a diffusive medium due to an object hidden in it can be expressed in terms of an effective charge and dipole moment. In the mesoscopic regime, beyond the diffusion approximation, we…
We study the extinction properties of the composite dust grains, consisting of host silicate spheroids and graphite as inclusions, using discrete dipole approximation (DDA). We calculate the extinction cross sections of the composite grains…
Scattering by dust grains in our Galaxy can produce X-ray halos, visible as expanding rings, around GRBs. This has been observed in three GRBs to date, allowing to derive accurate distances for the dust clouds as well as some constraints on…
The ongoing Gaia mission of ESA will provide accurate spatial and kinematical information for a large fraction of stars in the Galaxy. Interstellar extinction and line absorption studies toward a large number of stars at different distances…
Strong mass loss off stars at the tip of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) profoundly affects properties of these stars and their surroundings, including the subsequent planetary nebula (PN) stage. With this study we wanted to determine…