Related papers: The Connection Between Pulsation, Mass Loss and Ci…

We present a progress report of our project aiming to increase the number of known Cepheids in double-lined binary (SB2) systems from six to 100 or more. This will allow us, among other goals, to accurately measure masses for a large sample…

Modern tools for modeling stellar evolution, such as MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics), offer state-of-the-art implementations of stellar theories. However, this parametric approach introduces many free parameters that…

Classical Cepheids remain a cornerstone of the cosmic distance scale, and thus characterizing the dependence of their light amplitude on metallicity is important. Period-amplitude diagrams constructed for longer-period classical Cepheids in…

Red supergiant stars are surrounded by a gaseous and dusty circumstellar environment created by their mass loss which spreads heavy elements into the interstellar medium. The structure and the dynamics of this envelope are crucial to…

We present new Herschel/PACS images at 70, 100, and 160 micron of the well-known, nearby, carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch star IRC+10216 revealing multiple dust shells in its circumstellar envelope. For the first time, dust shells (or…

The gas-to-dust mass ratios found for interstellar dust within the Solar System, versus values determined astronomically for the cloud around the Solar System, suggest that large and small interstellar grains have separate histories, and…

Classical Cepheids are well-known and widely used distance indicators. As distance and extinction are usually degenerate, it is important to develop suitable methods to robustly anchor the distance scale. Here, we introduce a near-infrared…

Milky-Way and intergalactic dust extinction and reddening must be accounted for in measurements of distances throughout the universe. This work provides a comprehensive review of the various impacts of cosmic dust focusing specifically on…

(abridged) The dust content of the universe is primarily explored via its interaction with stellar photons, producing interstellar extinction. However, owing to the physical extension of the observing beam, observations may detect scattered…

We have observed a sample of 35 long-period variables and four Cepheid variables in the vicinity of 23 Galactic globular clusters using the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope. The long-period variables in the sample cover…

We present here a nearly complete census of classical Cepheids in the Magellanic System. The sample extends the set of Cepheids published in the past by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) to the outer regions of the Large…

Common Envelope (CE) systems are the result of Roche lobe overflow in interacting binaries. The subsequent evolution of the CE, its ejection and the formation of dust in its ejecta while the primary is on the Red Giant Branch (RGB), gives…

Interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) are magnetic structures propagating from the Sun's corona to the interplanetary medium. With over 20 years of observations at the L1 libration point, ACE offers hundreds of ICMEs detected at…

Aims: We aim to determine the abundances of SiO, CS, SiS, SO, and SO$_2$ in a large sample of oxygen-rich AGB envelopes covering a wide range of mass loss rates to investigate the potential role that these molecules could play in the…

We review recent developments regarding radiation driven mass loss from OB-stars. We first summarize the fundamental theoretical predictions, and then compare these to observational results (including the VLT-FLAMES survey of massive…

We present late-time (590-994 d) mid-IR photometry of the normal, but highly-reddened Type IIP supernova SN 2002hh. Bright, cool, slowly-fading emission is detected from the direction of the supernova. Most of this flux appears not to be…

Theoretical formation models and exoplanet detection surveys indicate that systems with multiple giant planets are common. We investigate how multiple super-thermal mass planets embedded in a circumstellar disk shape the dust distribution…

Physical dust models are presented for 65 galaxies in the SINGS survey that are strongly detected in the four IRAC bands and three MIPS bands. For each galaxy we estimate (1) the total dust mass, (2) the fraction of the dust mass…

(Abridged) I cross-correlate the OGLE database of Cepheids in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (MCs) with the second incremental release of the 2MASS JHK survey, and the DENIS IJK point source catalog towards the MCs. Of the 3384…

Classical Cepheids are key astrophysical laboratories for studying stellar structure and evolution, and for calibrating the cosmic distance scale. Despite major progress, uncertainties remain regarding their masses, luminosities, distances,…