Related papers: Dust in the Interplanetary Medium
The solar wind carves a bubble in the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM), known as the heliosphere. Charged interstellar dust grains (ISDG) encountering the heliosphere may be diverted around the heliopause or penetrate it depending on…
Uranus and Saturn share similarities in terms of their atmospheric composition, which is primarily made up of hydrogen and helium, as well as their ring systems. Uranus has 13 known rings, which are divided into narrow main rings, dusty…
Extrasolar debris disks are the dust disks found around nearby main sequence stars arising from the break-up of asteroids and comets orbiting the stars. Far-IR surveys (e.g., with Herschel) showed that ~20% of stars host detectable dust…
Most main-belt asteroids are primitive rock and metal bodies in orbit about the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Disruption, through high velocity collisions or rotational spin-up, is believed to be the primary mechanism for the production and…
We investigate the dynamics of dust grains with various sizes in protoplanetary disk winds driven by magnetorotational turbulence, by simulating the time evolution of the dust grain distribution in the vertical direction. Small dust grains,…
We study the dynamics of large dust grains >1 micron with orbits outside of the heliosphere (beyond 250 AU). Motion of the Solar System through the interstellar medium (ISM) at a velocity of 26 km/s subjects these particles to gas and…
Distance estimates derived from spectroscopy or parallax have been unified by considering extinction by large grains. The addition of such a population of what is called Dark Dust to models of the diffuse interstellar medium is tested…
Dust is an essential ingredient of galaxies, determining the physical and chemical conditions in the interstellar medium. Several complementary observational evidences indicate that the cosmic dust mass density significantly drops from…
Estimates of the cosmic star formation rate and of cluster metallicities independently imply that at z < 0.5 the gas in the universe has substantial average metallicity: 1/10 < Z/Z_solar < 1/3 for Omega_gas = 0.05. This metal density…
Main sequence stars are commonly surrounded by debris disks, formed by cold far-IR-emitting dust that is thought to be continuously replenished by a reservoir of undetected dust-producing planetesimals. We have investigated the orbital…
Although dust is widely found in astrophysics, forming dust is surprisingly difficult. The proper combination of low temperature (<2000 K) and high density is mainly found in the winds of late-type giant and supergiant stars which, as a…
When viewed from Earth, most of what we observe of a comet is dust. The influence of solar radiation pressure on the trajectories of dust particles depends on their cross-section to mass ratio. Hence solar radiation pressure acts like a…
Radio images of protoplanetary disks demonstrate that dust grains tend to organize themselves into rings. These rings may be a consequence of dust trapping within gas pressure maxima wherein the local high dust-to-gas ratio is expected to…
Interstellar dust (ISD) penetrates into the heliosphere due to the relative motion of the Sun and the local interstellar medium (LISM). Inside the heliosphere and at the boundaries, where solar wind interacts with the LISM, distribution of…
The abundances of gas and dust (solids and complex molecules) in the interstellar medium (ISM) as well as their composition and structures impact practically all of astrophysics. Fundamental processes from star formation to stellar winds to…
This paper reviews coagulation models for planet formation in the Kuiper Belt, emphasizing links to recent observations of our and other solar systems. At heliocentric distances of 35-50 AU, single annulus and multiannulus planetesimal…
Interstellar dust appears in a number of roles in the interstellar medium. Historically, the most familiar one is as a source of extinction in the optical. Absorbed optical and ultraviolet light heats the dust, whence infrared (including…
Observational evidence seems to indicate that the depletion of interstellar carbon into dust shows rather wide variations and that carbon undergoes rather rapid recycling in the interstellar medium (ISM). Small hydrocarbon grains are…
A necessary first step for dust removal in protoplanetary disc winds is the delivery of dust from the disc to the wind. In the case of ionized winds, the disc and wind are sharply delineated by a narrow ionization front where the gas…
The measurements of cosmic interplanetary dust by the instruments on board the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft contain the dynamical signature of dust generated by Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects, as well as short period Oort Cloud comets and…