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Galactic destruction of primordial deuterium is inevitably linked through star formation to the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. The relatively high present gas content and low metallicity suggest only modest D-destruction. In concert with…
The composition and properties of interstellar silicate dust are not well understood. In X-rays, interstellar dust can be studied in detail by making use of the fine structure features in the Si K-edge. The features in the Si K-edge offer a…
Polarized extinction and emission from dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) are hard to interpret, as they have a complex dependence on dust optical properties, grain alignment and magnetic field orientation. This is particularly true in…
The extinction law from ultraviolet (UV) to infrared (IR) (0.2-24 $\mu$m) is determined by relying on the blue-edge method and color excess ratios for some nearby molecular clouds, from low mass star forming region to massive star forming…
Atoms and molecules, and in particular CO, are important coolants during the evolution of interstellar star-forming gas clouds. The presence of dust grains, which allow many chemical reactions to occur on their surfaces, strongly impacts…
The composite grain is made up of a host silicate spheroid and graphite inclusions. The extinction efficiencies of the composite spheroidal grains for three axial ratios are computed using the discrete dipole approximation (DDA). The…
The wavelength dependences of interstellar extinction and polarization, supplemented by observed elemental abundances and the spectrum of infrared emission from dust heated by starlight, strongly constrain dust models. One dust model that…
It is commonly assumed that cold and dense Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) likely represent the birth sites massive stars. Therefore, this class of objects gets increasing attention. To enlarge the sample of well-characterised IRDCs in the…
Infrared photometry in the J (1.2 microns), H (1.7 microns), Ks (2.2 microns) bands from the 2MASS catalogue and in the W1 (3.4 microns), W2 (4.6 microns), W3 (12 microns), W4 (22 microns) bands from the WISE catalogue is used to reveal the…
White dwarfs that have accreted planetary bodies are a powerful probe of the bulk composition of exoplanetary material. In this paper, we present a Bayesian model to explain the abundances observed in the atmospheres of 202 DZ white dwarfs…
Depletion studies provide a way to understand the chemical composition of interstellar dust grains. We here examine 23 gamma-ray bursts (GRB) optical afterglow spectra (spanning 0.6<z<5.0) and compare their silicon and iron dust-phase…
Atmospheres regulate the planetary heat loss and therefore influence planetary thermal evolution. Uncertainty in a giant planet's thermal state contributes to the uncertainty in the inferred abundance of heavy elements it contains. Within…
We have observed continuum emission at lambda = 850 microns over ~4 square degrees of the Ophiuchus star-forming cloud using SCUBA on the JCMT, producing a submillimetre continuum map twenty times larger than previous Ophiuchus surveys. Our…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
Observations suggest that impactors and volcanism are connected, but the mechanism that links these events is unknown. This research proposes the impact exsolution hypothesis to explain how planetary scale collisions trigger volcanism. This…
Elements in the interstellar medium (ISM) exist in the form of gas or dust. The interstellar extinction and elemental abundances provide crucial constraints on the composition, size and quantity of interstellar dust. Most of the extinction…
Recently, two exoplanet candidates have been discovered, KIC 12557548b and KOI-2700b, whose transit profiles show evidence for a comet-like tail of dust trailing the planet, thought to be fed by the evaporation of the planet's surface. We…
Recent disk observations have revealed multiple indirect signatures of forming gas giant planets, but high-contrast imaging has rarely confirmed the presence of the suspected perturbers. Here, we exploit a unique opportunity provided by the…
Numerous studies over the past 30 years have suggested there is a causal connection between the motion of the Sun through the Galaxy and terrestrial mass extinctions or climate change. Proposed mechanisms include comet impacts (via…
We present an extinction map of the Polaris molecular cirrus cloud derived from star counts and compare it with the Schlegel et al. (1998) extinction map derived from the far--infrared dust opacity. We find that, within the Polaris cloud,…