Related papers: Dust and molecules in extra-galactic planetary neb…
Super-Earths and mini-Neptunes are the most abundant types of planets among the ~3500 confirmed exoplanets, and are expected to exhibit a wide variety of atmospheric compositions. Recent transmission spectra of super-Earths and…
Dust grains in neutral gas behave as aerodynamic particles, so they can develop large density fluctuations independent of gas density fluctuations. Specifically, gas turbulence can drive order-of-magnitude 'resonant' fluctuations in the…
Recent optical and submillimeter observations have begun to probe the existence of dust grains in the halos of spiral galaxies. I review our own work in this area which employs high-resolution optical images of edge-on spiral galaxies to…
The main achievements, current developments and prospects of molecular studies in external galaxies are reviewed. They are put in the context of the results of several decades of studies of molecules in local interstellar medium, their…
Low- and intermediate-mass ($\rm 0.8~M_\odot < M < 8~M_\odot$) stars that evolve into planetary nebulae (PNe) play an important role in tracing and driving Galactic chemical evolution. Spectroscopy of PNe enables access to both the initial…
We implement a detailed dust model into the L-Galaxies semi-analytical model which includes: injection of dust by type II and type Ia supernovae (SNe) and AGB stars; grain growth in molecular clouds; and destruction due to supernova-induced…
The outskirts of galaxies offer extreme environments where we can test our understanding of the formation, evolution, and destruction of molecules and their relationship with star formation and galaxy evolution. We review the basic…
Dust is formed in the expanding atmosphere during late stages of stellar evolution. Dust influences the dynamics and thermodynamics of the stellar atmosphere by its opacity. The dust opacity depends both on the optical properties of the…
We present a study of the composition of gas and dust in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, together -- the MCs) as measured by UV absorption spectroscopy. We have measured P II and Fe II along 85 sightlines toward the MCs…
With the progress of detection techniques, the number of low-mass and small-size exoplanets is increasing rapidly. However their characteristics and formation mechanisms are not yet fully understood. The metallicity of the host star is a…
The dense Galactic environment is a large reservoir of interstellar dust. Therefore, this region represents a perfect laboratory to study the properties of the cosmic dust grains. X-rays are the most direct way to detect the interaction of…
We have analyzed the behaviour of various parameters of PNe in the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) and the Galaxy as a function of their morphology. The luminosity function of different morphological types has been built, finding that elliptical…
Around 16% of the solar-like stars in our neighbourhood show IR-excesses due to debris discs and a fraction of them are known to host planets. We aim to determine in a homogeneous way the metallicity of a sample of stars with known debris…
In planetary nebulae, abundances of oxygen and other heavy elements derived from optical recombination lines are systematically higher than those derived from collisionally excited lines. We investigate the hypothesis that the destruction…
There are strong evidences which favour the existence of dust in active galaxies. Understanding the way in which dust interacts with the radiation and influences the physical conditions of the gas is crucial if we want to learn about the…
The Planetary Nebulae (PNe) return nuclear processed stellar material back to the interstellar medium (ISM) and thus have an important influence on the chemical evolution of our Galaxy. We present results of a survey of PNe in decay which…
During the asymptoyic giant branch (AGB) phase, different elements are dredge-up to the stellar surface depending on progenitor mass and metallicity. When the mass loss increases at the end of the AGB, a circumstellar dust shell is formed,…
Thanks to the mid-infrared capability offered by Spitzer, systematic searches of dust in SNe have been carried out over the past decade. Studies have revealed the presence of a substantial amount of dust over a broad range of SN subtypes.…
In some scenarios, the dark matter particle predominantly scatters inelastically with the target, producing a heavier neutral particle in the final state. In this class of scenarios, the reach in parameter space of direct detection…
We study the correlation between stellar mass and stellar metallicity in the Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments (EAGLE) suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. At a given stellar mass, simulated galaxies…