Related papers: The Dawn of Dust Astronomy
We present the impact rates of dust particles recorded by the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) aboard the Cassini spacecraft. The "dust counters" evaluate the quality of an impact and give rise to the apparent density of dust particles in space.…
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…
Dust plays a key role during star, disk and planet formation. Yet, its dynamics during the protostellar collapse remains a poorly investigated field. Recent studies seem to indicate that dust may decouple efficiently from the gas during…
We study interstellar dust evolution in various environments by means of chemical evolution models for galaxies of different morphological types. We start from the formalism developed by Dwek (1998) to study dust evolution in the solar…
We test emission models of circum-nuclear dust torii around quasars, at low and high redshifts, by using a large collection of photometric data for an unbiased sample of 120 optically-selected objects with millimetric and sub-millimetric…
Dust is an important constituent in cometary comae; its analysis is one of the major objectives of ESA's Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (C-G). Several instruments aboard Rosetta are dedicated to studying various aspects…
Nanometer- and micrometer-sized solid particles play an important role in the evolutionary cycle of stars and interstellar matter. The optical properties of cosmic grains determine the interaction of the radiation field with the solids,…
Dust is essential to the evolution of galaxies and drives the formation of planetary systems. The challenge of inferring the origin of different presolar dust grains from meteoritic samples motivates forward modelling to understand the…
Condensation of circumstellar dust begins with formation of molecular clusters close to the stellar photosphere. These clusters are predicted to act as condensation cores at lower temperatures and allow efficient dust formation farther away…
The mass density of dust particles that form from asteroids and comets in the interplanetary medium of the solar system is, near 1 AU, comparable to the mass density of the solar wind. It is mainly contained in particles of micrometer size…
Recent works have demonstrated a surprisingly small variation of the dust-to-metals ratio in different environments and a correlation between dust extinction and the density of stars. Naively, one would interpret these findings as strong…
The exoplanet detection is the most exciting and challenging field of astronomy. The discovery of many exoplanets has revolutionized our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems and has showed new ways to search for…
Dust particles immersed within a plasma environment, such as those found in planetary rings or cometary environments, will acquire an electric charge. If the ratio of interparticle potential energy to average kinetic energy is high enough…
The evolution of the cosmic dust content and the cycle between metals and dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) play a fundamental role in galaxy evolution. The chemical enrichment of the Universe can be traced through the evolution of the…
Astroparticle physics and cosmology allow us to scan the universe through multiple messengers. It is the combination of these probes that improves our understanding of the universe, both in its composition and its dynamics. Unlike other…
This paper reviews the dust content of the high redshift (z > 2) universe. Studies of the various "species" in the high-z "zoo" show that almost all have strong evidence for containing dust. The one exception, where the evidence is not yet…
Space debris is a major threat to the satellite infrastructure. A collision with even small particle, e.g. 1 cm of size, can cause a catastrophic event when the parent body, spacecraft or upper stage, will break up into hundreds of…
This paper provides a brief overview of the journey of molecules through the Cosmos, from local diffuse interstellar clouds and PDRs to distant galaxies, and from cold dark clouds to hot star-forming cores, protoplanetary disks,…
Planet formation in protoplanetary discs requires dust grains to coagulate from the sub-micron sizes that are found in the interstellar medium into much larger objects. For the first time, we study the growth of dust grains during the…
Astronomy has a long history of acquiring, systematizing, and interpreting large quantities of data. Starting from the earliest sky atlases through the first major photographic sky surveys of the 20th century, this tradition is continuing…