Related papers: Interstellar extinction and polarization -- A sphe…
Dust polarisation observations at optical wavelengths help understand the dust grain properties and trace the plane-of-the-sky component of the magnetic field. In this study, we make use of published optical polarisation data acquired with…
This review describes our current understanding of interstellar extinction. This differ substantially from the ideas of the 20th century. With infrared surveys of hundreds of millions of stars over the entire sky, such as 2MASS,…
Although interstellar grains are known to be aspherical, their actual shapes remain poorly constrained. We assess whether three continuous distributions of ellipsoidal shapes from the literature are suitable for describing the shapes of…
We calculate the scattering of X-rays by interstellar dust, for a dust model that reproduces the observed wavelength-dependent extinction and polarization of starlight. On interstellar sightlines that produce appreciable starlight…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of dusty spiral galaxies, modelled as bulge + disk systems, aimed to study their extinction and polarization properties. The extinction parameters (absorption and scattering) of dust grains are calculated…
Interstellar polarization from aligned dust grains can be measured both in transmission at visible and near-infrared wavelengths and in emission at far-infrared and sub-mm wavelengths. These observations can help predict the behavior of…
Interstellar polarization at far-infrared through millimeter wavelengths (0.1 - 1 mm) is primarily due to thermal emission from dust grains aligned with magnetic fields. This mechanism has led to studies of magnetic fields in a variety of…
Scattering and absorption of X-rays by interstellar dust is calculated for a model consisting of carbonaceous grains and amorphous silicate grains. The calculations employ realistic dielectric functions with structure near X-ray absorption…
Dust in the diffuse interstellar medium remains incompletely understood with regard to the structure, composition, size distribution, and alignment properties of the grains. Joint observations of reddening, starlight polarisation spectra,…
The relationship between dust polarization and extinction was determined for the cold dense starless molecular cloud core FeSt 1-457 based on the background star polarimetry of dichroic extinction at near-infrared wavelengths. Owing to the…
The polarization spectrum, or wavelength dependence of the polarization fraction, of interstellar dust emission provides important insights into the grain alignment mechanism of interstellar dust grains. We investigate the far-infrared…
Polarized far-infrared and submillimeter emission is calculated for models of nonspherical dust grains that are constrained to reproduce the observed wavelength-dependent extinction and polarization of starlight. For emission from regions…
Recent observations in emission, extinction, and polarisation have at least partially invalidated most of the astronomical standard grain models for the diffuse ISM. Moreover, lab measurements on interstellar silicate analogues have shown…
Interstellar absorption in the galactic plane is highly variable from one direction to another. In this paper colour excesses and distances from a new open cluster sample are used to investigate the spatial distribution of the interstellar…
We present a statistical analysis of the interstellar medium (ISM) polarization from the largest compilation available of starlight data, which comprises ~ 5500 stars. The measured correlation between the mean polarization degree and…
We analyze low resolution Spitzer infrared (IR) 5-14 micron spectra of the diffuse emission toward a carefully selected sample of stars. The sample is composed of sight lines toward stars that have well determined ultraviolet (UV)…
In many models of dusty objects in space the grains are assumed to be composite or fluffy. However, the computation of the optical properties of such particles is still a very difficult problem. We analyze how the increase of grain porosity…
For more than 5000 stars with accurate parallaxes from the Hipparcos and Gaia DR1 Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS), Tycho-2 photometry, interstellar polarization from eight catalogues and interstellar extinction from eight 3D maps the…
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 present a new model of interstellar dust in which large grains are a single composite material, ``astrodust,'' and nanoparticle-sized grains come in distinct varieties including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). We argue that a…