Related papers: Dust/ice mixing in cold regions and solid-state wa…
Carbon dioxide is one of the three most abundant species within the ice mantles around dust grains inside molecular clouds. Since a substantial amount of interstellar grains is made of siliceous materials, we have studied the infrared…
In this work we investigate the effects of ion accretion and size-dependent dust temperatures on the abundances of both gas-phase and grain-surface species. While past work has assumed a constant areal density for icy species, we show that…
In regions where stars form, variations in density and temperature can cause gas to freeze-out onto dust grains forming ice mantles, which influences the chemical composition of a cloud. The aim of this paper is to understand in detail the…
Measurements by dust detectors on interplanetary spacecraft appear to indicate a substantial flux of interstellar particles with masses exceeding 10^{-12}gram. The reported abundance of these massive grains cannot be typical of interstellar…
Recent space missions have provided information on the physical and chemical properties of interstellar grains such as the ratio $\beta$ of radiation pressure to gravity acting on the grains in addition to the composition, structure, and…
The properties of high latitude dust are of great interest to extragalactic astronomers and cosmologists. It is proposed here that essentially all high Galactic latitude interstellar dust is at a typical temperature of about 20~K (i.e. it…
There is a long-standing discussion in the astrophysical/astrochemical community as to the structure and morphology of dust grains in various astrophysical environments (e.g., interstellar clouds, protostellar envelopes, protoplanetary and…
We investigate the dust growth in oxygen-rich stellar outflows for a set of nine well-observed massive supergiants with optically thin dust shells. Models of the infrared emission from their circumstellar dust shells are compared to their…
Dust grains are an important component of the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. We present the first direct measurement of the residence times of interstellar dust in the different ISM phases, and of the transition rates between these…
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,…
Interstellar polarization at far-infrared through millimeter wavelengths (0.1 - 1 mm) is primarily due to thermal emission from dust grains aligned with magnetic fields. This mechanism has led to studies of magnetic fields in a variety of…
Dust grains play a central role in the physics and chemistry of cosmic environments. They influence the optical and thermal properties of the medium due to their interaction with stellar radiation; provide surfaces for the chemical…
Silicon is present in interstellar dust grains, meteorites and asteroids, and to date thirteen silicon-bearing molecules have been detected in the gas-phase towards late-type stars or molecular clouds, including silane and silane…
Electrons densities in different locations of our galaxy are obtained in pulsar astronomy by dividing the dispersion measure (DM) by the distance of the pulsar to Earth. The properties of the interstellar plasma are related to its heating.…
Our current understanding of the physical conditions in the inner regions of protoplanetary discs is becoming increasingly challenged by the more detailed observational and theoretical explorations. Calculation of dust temperature is one of…
The physical conditions in a collapsing cloud can be traced by observations of molecular lines. To correctly interpret these observations the abundance distributions of the observed species need to be derived. The chemistry in a collapsing…
We study infrared emission of 17 isolated, diffuse clouds with masses of order solar masses, to test the hypothesis that grain property variations cause the apparently low gas-to-dust ratios that have been measured in those clouds. Maps of…
This article is based on an invited talk given by V. P. Kulkarni at the 8th Cosmic Dust meeting. Dust has a profound effect on the physics and chemistry of the interstellar gas in galaxies and on the appearance of galaxies. Understanding…
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…
Our knowledge about the physical processes determining the activity of comets were mainly influenced by several extremely successful space missions, the predictions of theoretical models and the results of laboratory experiments. However,…