Related papers: Zodiacal light observations and its link with cosm…
Interstellar dust grains efficiently absorb and scatter UV and optical radiation in galaxies, and therefore can significantly affect the apparent structure of spiral galaxies. We discuss the effect of dust attenuation on the observed…
Comets are made of volatile and refractory material and naturally experience various degrees of sublimation as they orbit around the Sun. This gas release, accompanied by dust, represents what is traditionally described as activity.…
Galactic dust constitutes approximately half of the elements more massive than helium produced in stellar nucleosynthesis. Notwithstanding the formation of dust grains in the dense, cool atmospheres of late-type stars, there still remain…
We present an analysis of the blank sky spectra observed with the Faint Object Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope. We study the diffuse sky emission from ultraviolet to optical wavelengths, which is composed of the zodiacal…
The visual perception of the natural night sky in many places of the world is strongly disturbed by anthropogenic light. Part of this artificial light is scattered in the atmosphere and propagates towards the observer, adding to the natural…
The zodiacal cloud is one of the largest structures in the solar system and strongly governed by meteoroid collisions near the Sun. Collisional erosion occurs throughout the zodiacal cloud, yet it is historically difficult to directly…
Lightning is present in all solar system planets which form clouds in their atmospheres. Cloud formation outside our solar system is possible in objects with much higher temperatures than on Earth or on Jupiter: Brown dwarfs and giant…
Several sets of data show that small interstellar grains captured in interstellar magnetic fields draped over the heliosphere appear to polarize the light of nearby stars. The maximum polarization direction is offset in ecliptic longitude…
We show that space-based telescopes such as the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph will be able to detect the light scattered by the interstellar grains along lines of sight passing near stars in our Galaxy. The relative flux of…
Interstellar dust is still a dominant uncertainty in Astronomy, limiting precision in e.g., cosmological distance estimates and models of how light is re-processed within a galaxy. When a foreground galaxy serendipitously overlaps a more…
Within the project Galactic Cold Cores we are carrying out Herschel photometric observations of cold interstellar clouds detected with the Planck satellite. The three fields observed as part of the Herschel science demonstration phase (SDP)…
The dust tails of comets similar to Hale-Bopp can scatter as much optical light as does the Earth. Space-based observatories such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder or Darwin that will detect extra-solar terrestrial planets also will be able…
We report the first measurement of the zodiacal light (ZL) polarization spectrum in the near-infrared between 0.8 and 1.8 $\mu$m. Using the low-resolution spectrometer (LRS) on board the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER),…
We present the near- and mid-infrared zodiacal light spectrum obtained with the AKARI Infra-Red Camera (IRC). A catalog of 278 spectra of the diffuse sky covering a wide range of Galactic and ecliptic latitudes was constructed. The…
Meteoroids originating from the local interstellar medium, traverse the solar system. This has been proven by in situ measurements by interplanetary spacecraft as well as highly sensitive radar measurements. Early attempts to detect…
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 Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft has flown into the most dense and previously unexplored region of our solar system's zodiacal cloud. While PSP does not have a dedicated dust detector, multiple instruments onboard are sensitive to…
Many nearby stars are surrounded by a bright ring or disk of cold dust. Our calculations show that these disks and rings of dust are signposts of recent planet formation. Bright rings appear because dust associated with the formation of a…
This short paper reviews some of the results obtained from ISO observations (ISOCAM and ISOPHOT) on galaxy clusters: Chap.1: "Intracluster dust": new evidence for the presence of dust outside galaxies. Chap.2:"Mid-Infrared Emission of…
Context: The dust-brightness phase curves that have been measured by the OSIRIS cameras on board the Rosetta spacecraft within the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) present a remarkable u-shape. Aims: Our goal is to compare…