Related papers: Missing cosmic metals revealed by X-ray absorption…
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,…
Modern cosmology predicts that matter in our Universe has assembled today into a vast network of filamentary structures colloquially termed the Cosmic Web. Because this matter is either electromagnetically invisible (i.e., dark) or too…
Recent optical observations have led to a significant progress in our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. However, our view on the deep universe is currently limited to the starlight which directly escapes from high-redshift…
The redshifted ultraviolet light from early stars at z ~ 10 contributes to the cosmic near infrared background. We present detailed calculations of its spectrum with various assumptions about metallicity and mass spectrum of early stars. We…
Because of their deep gravitational potential wells, clusters of galaxies retain all the metals produced by the stellar populations of the member galaxies. Most of these metals reside in the hot plasma which dominates the baryon content of…
Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, collectively termed metals, were created inside stars and dispersed through space at the final stages of stellar evolution. The relative amounts of different isotopes (variants of the same element…
The horizon for studies of element abundances has expanded dramatically in the last ten years. Once the domain of astronomers concerned chiefly with stars and nearby galaxies, this field has now become a key component of observational…
The chemical composition of the most metal-deficient stars reflects the composition of the gas from which they formed. These old stars provide crucial clues to the star formation history and the synthesis of chemical elements in the early…
The cosmic microwave background and the cosmic expansion can be interpreted as evidence that the Universe underwent an extremely hot and dense phase about 14 Gyr ago. The nucleosynthesis computations tell us that the Universe emerged from…
The origins of the elements and isotopes of cosmic material is a critical aspect of understanding the evolution of the universe. Nucleosynthesis typically requires physical conditions of high temperatures and densities. These are found in…
Accurate estimates of the absorption of X-rays by interstellar gas and dust are of crucial importance for the analysis and interpretation of almost all astronomical soft X-ray observations. However, the present X-ray absorption data…
Metal-poor stars provide the fossil record of Galactic chemical evolution and the nucleosynthesis processes that took place at the earliest times in the history of our Galaxy. From detailed abundance studies of low mass, extremely…
Most of the visible matter in the Universe is ionized, so that cosmic magnetic fields are quite easy to generate and due to the lack of magnetic monopoles hard to destroy. Magnetic fields have been measured in or around practically all…
Most of the visible matter in the Universe is in a plasma state, or more specifically is composed of ionized or partially ionized gas permeated by magnetic fields. Thanks to recent advances on the theory and detection of cosmic magnetic…
Extensive spectroscopic studies of stars with and without planets have concluded that stars hosting planets are significantly more metal-rich than those without planets. More subtle trends of different chemical elements begin to appear as…
The recent availability of wideband receivers and high sensitivity instruments in the mm and submm wavelengths has opened the possibility of studying in detail the chemistry of the interstellar medium in extragalactic objects. Within the…
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) connects the gas between the interstellar medium (ISM) and the intergalactic medium, which plays an important role in galaxy evolution. We use the stellar mass-metallicity relationship to investigate whether…
A large fraction of the baryons and most of the metals in the Universe are unaccounted for. They likely lie in extended galaxy halos, galaxy groups, and the cosmic web, and measuring their nature is essential to understanding galaxy…
The abundance of alpha elements and iron in stars of globular clusters shows the composition of the gaseous medium, in which they have been formed. In the present paper, we discuss a possibility to consider dense clouds of circumgalactic…
Intrinsically luminous giant stars in the Milky Way are the only potential volume-complete tracers of the distant disk, bulge, and halo. The chemical abundances of metal-poor giants also reflect the compositions of the earliest star-forming…