Related papers: What can the occult do for you?
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…
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…
Dust offers a unique probe of the interstellar medium (ISM) across multiple size, density, and temperature scales. Dust is detected in outflows of evolved stars, star-forming molecular clouds, planet-forming disks, and even in galaxies at…
This article gives an overview of the constitution, physical conditions and observables of dust in the interstellar medium of nearby galaxies. We first review the macroscopic, spatial distribution of dust in these objects, and its…
The thermal emission of dust is one of the most important tracers of the interstellar medium: multi-wavelength photometry in the far-infrared (FIR) and submillimeter (submm) can be fitted with a model, providing estimates of the dust mass.…
In the last decade, it has become clear that the dust-enshrouded star formation contributes significantly to early galaxy evolution. Detection of dust is therefore essential in determining the properties of galaxies in the high-redshift…
In a cosmological context dust has been always poorly understood. That is true also for the statistic of GRBs so that we started a program to understand its role both in relation to GRBs and in function of z. This paper presents a composite…
This paper reviews our current understanding of interstellar dust models, what constitutes a viable dust model, what observational constraints are essential for deriving such model, and the current viable dust models. Interstellar dust…
Over the past several decades, advances in telescope/detector technologies and deep imaging techniques have pushed surface brightness limits to ever fainter levels. We can now both detect and measure the diffuse, extended star light that…
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…
Multi-wavelength spectroscopy can be used to constrain the dust and gas properties in debris disks. Circumstellar dust absorbs and scatters incident stellar light. The scattered light is sometimes resolved spatially at visual and…
The Sun is located close to the Galactic mid-plane, meaning that we observe the Galaxy through significant quantities of dust. Moreover, the vast majority of the Galaxy's stars also lie in the disc, meaning that dust has an enormous impact…
Interstellar dust is spread in galaxies over large scales, often far beyond the stellar disks. Several mechanisms can be responsible for carrying the dust both in the vertical and radial directions, producing in general different spatial…
Our current understanding of interstellar dust is summarized at an introductory level. Submicron-sized interstellar dust grains absorb and scatter light, and reradiate the absorbed energy in the infrared. The grain population spans a range…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it is an important component of the interstellar medium and plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies, the formation of stars and…
Galactic interstellar dust (ISD) is the major ingredient in planetary formation. However, information on this important material has been extremely limited. Recently the Ulysses dust detector has identified and measured interstellar dust…
Over the past decades, a population of galaxies invisible in optical/near-infrared, but bright at longer wavelengths, have been identified through color selections. These so-called optically faint/dark galaxies are considered to be massive…
Optical/UV photons and even harder radiation components in galaxies are absorbed and scattered by dust and re-emitted at infrared wavelengths. For a better understanding of the obscured regions of the galaxies detailed models of the…
We demonstrate a new technique to search for dark compact objects. When dark matter comprising a dark compact object interacts with photons, the compact object can disperse light traveling though it. As these objects pass between Earth and…
We present a model of the interaction of interstellar dust grains with a stellar environment, that predicts the distribution of interstellar dust grains in the size range between $0.1 {\rm \mu m}$ and $1 {\rm \mu m}$ around a star for the…