Related papers: Stardust findings. Implications for panspermia
My thesis work aims to study the inter-relation between various physical and chemical conditions in a wide range of astrophysical environments. Our studied regions range from the super-hot regions (i.e., nebular, photon-dominated, or…
The discovery of 1I/`Oumuamua confirmed that planetesimals must exist in great numbers in interstellar space. Originally generated during planet formation, they are scattered from their original systems and subsequently drift through…
Interstellar dust is a significant component of matter in the galaxies. The dust owns its origin and reprocessing in a wide range of astrophysical environments. In order to understand the origin and evolution of the distinct types of…
Dust grains of crystalline silicate, which are rarely presented in interstellar space, were found in cometary nuclei. These crystalline silicates are thought to have formed by annealing of amorphous silicate grains or direct condensation of…
Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of…
M82 is a unique representative of a whole class of galaxies, starbursts with superwinds, in the Very Nearby Galaxy Survey with Herschel. In addition, its interaction with the M81 group has stripped a significant portion of its interstellar…
We use a sub-set of the DustPedia galaxy sample (461 galaxies) to investigate the effect the environment has had on galaxies. We consider Virgo cluster and field samples and also assign a density contrast parameter to each galaxy, as…
Several planets have recently been discovered around old metal-poor stars, implying that these planets are also old, formed in the early Universe. The canonical theory suggests that the conditions for their formation could not have existed…
This paper presents late-time near-infrared and {\it Spitzer} mid-infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations of warm dust in the Type IIn SN 2005ip in NGC 2906. The spectra show evidence for two dust components with different…
Dusty disks around young stars are formed out of interstellar dust that consists of amorphous, submicrometre grains. Yet the grains found in comets and meteorites, and traced in the spectra of young stars, include large crystalline grains…
Conventional narrowband photoelectric photometry of Comet Hale-Bopp (1995 O1) was obtained on 99 nights from mid-1995 to early-2000, yielding gas and dust production rates over an unprecedented range of time and distance. The appearance of…
Astronomical observations and analysis of stardust isolated from meteorites have revealed a highly diverse interstellar and circumstellar grain inventory, including a wide range of amorphous materials and crystalline compounds (silicates…
Interstellar dust permeates our Galaxy and plays an important role in many physical processes in the diffuse and dense regions of the interstellar medium. High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy, coupled with modelling based on laboratory dust…
By comparing sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) infrared and Green Bank Telescope 21 cm observations, we are able to report the first detection of dust emission in Complex C, the largest High Velocity Cloud in the sky. Dust in the…
We have analyzed Spitzer and NASA/IRTF 2 - 35 \mum spectra of the warm, ~350 K circumstellar dust around the nearby MS star {\eta} Corvi (F2V, 1.4 \pm 0.3 Gyr). The spectra show clear evidence for warm, water- and carbon-rich dust at ~3 AU…
In 2018, images were released of a planet being formed around the star PDS 70, offering a tantalizing glimpse into how planets come into being. However, many questions remain about how dust evolves into planets, and astrophysical…
With the number of confirmed rocky exoplanets increasing steadily, their characterisation and the search for exoplanetary biospheres is becoming an increasingly urgent issue in astrobiology. We aim to investigate the possibility of…
If Type-II supernovae - the evolutionary end points of short-lived, massive stars - produce a significant quantity of dust (>0.1 M_sun) then they can explain the rest-frame far-infrared emission seen in galaxies and quasars in the first Gyr…
We present the evolution of dust and molecular gas properties in a sample of 11 $z\sim0.03$ starburst to post-starburst (PSB) galaxies selected to span an age sequence from ongoing starburst to 1 Gyr after the starburst ended. All PSBs…
Comets hold answers to mysteries of the Solar System by recording presolar history, the initial states of planet formation and prebiotic organics and volatiles to the early Earth. Analysis of returned samples from a comet nucleus will…