Related papers: Dust within the old nuclear star cluster in the Mi…
The Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc (NSD) and nuclear star cluster (NSC) are the main features of the Galactic centre. Nevertheless, their observation is hampered by the extreme source crowding and high extinction. Hence, their relation…
The Milky Way's central parsec is a highly extinguished region with a population of high-proper-motion stars. We have tracked 145 stars for $\sim$10 years at wavelengths between 1 and 4 microns to analyze extinction effects in…
The nuclear stellar disc (NSD) is a dense stellar structure at the centre of our Galaxy. Given its proximity, it constitutes a unique laboratory to understand other galactic nuclei. Nevertheless, the high crowding and extinction hamper its…
We extract J and K_s magnitudes from the 2MASS Point Source Catalog for approximately 6 million stars with 8 < K_s < 13 in order to build an A_K extinction map within 10 degrees of the Galactic centre. The extinction was determined by…
To investigate the distribution of dust in Sb and Sc galaxies we have analyzed near-infrared and optical surface photometry for an unbiased sample of 37 galaxies. Since light in the $K$-band is very little affected by extinction by dust,…
Interstellar dust is a major foreground contaminant for many observations and a key component in the chemistry of the interstellar medium, yet its properties remain highly uncertain. Using low-resolution spectra, we accurately measure the…
(abridged) In this paper we aim at determining the shape, size, and luminosity/mass of the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster (MWNSC). We use Spitzer/IRAC images at 3.6 and 4.5 micrometer, where interstellar extinction is at a minimum but the…
We use Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of red clump stars taken as part of the Small Magellanic Cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution (SMIDGE) program to measure the average dust extinction curve in a ~ 200 pc x 100 pc…
The gas-to-dust ratio of reddened stars in the Milky Way (MW), the Magellanic Clouds, and in general is usually expressed as a linear relation between the hydrogen column density, N(H), and the reddening, E(B-V), or extinction in the V band…
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are located at the photometric and dynamical centers of the majority of galaxies. They are among the densest star clusters in the Universe. The NSC in the Milky Way is the only object of this class that can be…
The aims of this work are to provide accurate photometry in multiple near-infrared broadband filters, to determine the power-law index of the extinction-law toward the central parsec of the Galaxy, to provide measurements of the absolute…
The extinction curve derived from ISO mid-infrared (IR) observations of the Galactic center (GC) exhibits a surprisingly flat behavior in the ~ 3 to 8 micron region, contrary to the deep minimum expected from standard interstellar dust…
Galaxies behind the Milky Way suffer size reduction and dimming due to their obscuration by dust in the disk of our Galaxy. The degree of obscuration is wavelength dependent. It decreases towards longer wavelengths. Compared to the optical,…
The nuclear star cluster of the Milky Way is a unique target in the Universe. Contrary to extragalactic nuclear star clusters, using current technology it can be resolved into tens of thousands of individual stars. This allows us to study…
Dust plays a central role in the unification theory of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Whether the dust that forms the torus around an AGN is tenth-$\mu$m-sized like interstellar grains or much larger has a profound impact on correcting for…
We derive new constraints on the mass, rotation, orbit structure and statistical parallax of the Galactic old nuclear star cluster (NSC) and the mass of the supermassive black hole. We combine star counts and kinematic data from Fritz et al…
The presence of the dust in the circumnuclear region strongly affects our view of the nucleus itself. The effect is strong in type 2 objects but weaker effect is likely to be present in type 1 objects as well. In these objects a correction…
We examine the three-dimensional structure and dust extinction properties in a ~ 200 pc $\times$ 100 pc region in the southwest bar of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). We model a deep Hubble Space Telescope optical color-magnitude diagram…
The recent discovery that the UV dust extinction in starburst galaxies is similar to that found in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) motivated us to re-investigate the ultraviolet (UV) extinction found in the SMC. We have been able to…
Dust extinction and reddening are ubiquitous in astronomical observations and are often a major source of systematic uncertainty. We present here a study of the correlation between extinction in the Milky Way and the equivalent width of the…