Related papers: Where have all the interstellar silicon carbides g…
The abundance of both amorphous and crystalline silicates in very small grains is limited by the fact that the 10 micron silicate emission feature is not detected in the diffuse ISM. On the basis of the observed IR emission spectrum for the…
New SiO multi-transition millimetre line observations of a sample of carbon stars, including J=8-7 observations with the APEX telescope, are used to probe the role of non-equilibrium chemistry and the influence of grains in circumstellar…
We present a quantitative model for the infrared emission from dust in the diffuse interstellar medium. The model consists of a mixture of amorphous silicate grains and carbonaceous grains, each with a wide size distribution ranging from…
In the interstellar medium of the Milky Way, certain elements -- e.g., Mg, Si, Al, Ca, Ti, Fe -- reside predominantly in interstellar dust grains. These grains absorb, scatter, and emit electromagnetic radiation, heat the interstellar…
An extensive modelling of CO line emission from the circumstellar envelopes around a number of carbon stars is performed. By combining radio observations and infrared observations obtained by ISO the circumstellar envelope characteristics…
Spinning small silicate grains were recently invoked to account for the Galactic foreground anomalous microwave emission. These grains, if present, will absorb starlight in the far ultraviolet (UV). There is also renewed interest in…
GCIRS3 is the most prominent MIR source in the central pc of the Galaxy. NIR spectroscopy failed to solve the enigma of its nature. The properties of extreme individual objects of the central stellar cluster contribute to our knowledge of…
Large fractions of metals are missing from the observable gas-phase in the interstellar medium (ISM) because they are incorporated into dust grains, a phenomenon called dust depletion. The study of dust depletion in the ISM is important to…
The life-cycle of cosmic dust grains is far from being understood and the origin and evolution of interstellar medium (ISM) grains is still under debate. In the ISM, the cosmic dust destruction rate is faster than the production rate by…
We observed a sample of evolved stars in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC) with the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Comparing samples from the SMC, LMC, and the Galaxy reveals that the dust-production…
The dense Galactic environment is a large reservoir of interstellar dust. Therefore, this region represents a perfect laboratory to study the properties of the cosmic dust grains. X-rays are the most direct way to detect the interaction of…
We review the properties of dust in protoplanetary disks around optically visible pre-main sequence stars obtained with a variety of observational techniques, from measurements of scattered light at visual and infrared wavelengths to…
Detailed models are presented for the late epoch mid infrared (MIR) emission from collisionally heated grains in the shocked circumstellar gas around SN 1987A. Thermal dust emission from a region of moderate density interior to the thick…
Interstellar dust is a major foreground contaminant for many observations and a key component in the chemistry of the interstellar medium, yet its properties remain highly uncertain. Using low-resolution spectra, we accurately measure the…
We present results of the XMM-Newton observation on the bright X-ray binary Cyg X-2. In our analysis we focus upon the absorption and scattering of the X-ray emission by interstellar dust. The scattering halo around Cyg X-2, observed with…
We present new spectroscopic observations of the 3.4 micron absorption feature in the Seyfert galaxies, NGC1068 and NGC7674, and the ultraluminous infrared galaxy, IRAS08572+3915. A signature of C-H bonds in aliphatic hydrocarbons, the 3.4…
Dust is an important tracer of the structure of interstellar clouds, as well as a central factor in the thermal balance and chemistry of the clouds. Our knowledge of the dust properties is nevertheless incomplete, especially regarding the…
While it is well recognized that both the Galactic interstellar extinction curves and the gas-phase abundances of dust-forming elements exhibit considerable variations from one sight line to another, as yet most of the dust extinction…
We analyse observational correlations for three elements entering into the composition of interstellar silicate and oxide grains. Using current solar abundances (Asplund et al. 2009), we convert the gas-phase abundances into dust-phase…
The condensation of complex silicates with pyroxene and olivine composition at conditions prevailing in molecular clouds has been experimentally studied. For this purpose, molecular species comprising refractory elements were forced to…