Related papers: Interstellar absorption and dust scattering
Over the course of its motion through the Galaxy, our solar system has encountered many interstellar environments of varying characteristics. Interstellar medium (ISM) density variations spanning seven orders of magnitude are commonly seen…
Galaxy clusters, the largest clearly defined objects in our Universe, are ideal laboratories to study in detail the cosmic evolution of the intergalactic intracluster medium (ICM) and the cluster galaxy population. For the ICM, which is…
This white paper is motivated by open questions in star formation, which can be uniquely addressed by high resolution X-ray imaging and require an X-ray observatory with large collecting area along good spectral resolution. A complete…
Typical galaxies emit about one third of their energy in the infrared. The origin of this emission reprocessed starlight absorbed by interstellar dust grains and reradiated as thermal emission in the infrared. In particularly dusty…
High resolution X-ray spectra of the Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) on board the XMM satellite are used to resolve the oxygen K absorption edge. By combining spectra of low and high extinction sources, the observed absorption edge…
The metallicity and dust-to-metals ratio of the Galaxy are fundamental parameters in understanding the ISM, but there is still uncertainty surrounding these parameters. In this paper, the dust-to-metals ratio in the Galaxy is determined…
This review addresses what can be learned from infrared observations about galaxies powered predominantly by star formation. Infrared techniques mostly probe the interstellar medium of galaxies, yielding physical and chemical information on…
Using three dimensional Monte Carlo radiation transfer models of photoionisation and dust scattering, we explore different components of the widespread diffuse H$\alpha$ emission observed in the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and…
Infrared spectra of a number of evolved O-rich stars have been obtained with the Short- and Long- Wavelength spectrometers on board the Infrared Space Observatory. The very broad wavelength coverage (2.4-197 micron) obtained by combining…
Clusters of galaxies are used in a variety of ways to do cosmology. Some of them are presented here. Their X-ray emitting gas allows us to determine the baryon fraction, dark matter distribution and the matter density $\Omega_{m}$ of the…
Over the past decade, microlensing has developed into a powerful tool to study stellar astrophysics, especially stellar atmospheres, stellar masses, and binarity. I review this progress. Stellar atmospheres can be probed whenever the source…
We present preliminary results on Herschel/PACS mid/far-infrared photometric observations of INTEGRAL supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), with the aim of detecting the presence and characterizing the nature of absorbing material…
Mapping of near-infrared (NIR) scattered light is a recent method for the study of interstellar clouds, complementing other, more commonly used methods, like dust emission and extinction. Our goal is to study the usability of this method on…
Since in situ studies and interplanetary dust collections only provide a spatially limited amount of information about the interplanetary dust properties, it is of major importance to complete these studies with properties inferred from…
The presence of dust in elliptical galaxies has recently been shown to be quite common. Deep optical multi-colour CCD imaging has revealed the presence of dust lanes and patches, and the technique of co-adding IRAS survey scans has led to…
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…
Scattering by interstellar dust grains can produce time variable X-ray halos around gamma-ray bursts (GRB). In particular, an X-ray expanding ring is expected when a short pulse of X-ray radiation is scattered by a narrow layer of dust in…
Observations across the electromagnetic spectrum of radiative processes involving interstellar dust -- emission, extinction, and scattering -- are used to constrain the parameters of dust models and more directly to aid in foreground…
We extend and investigate the spheroidal model of interstellar dust grains used to simultaneously interpret the observed interstellar extinction and polarization curves. We compare our model with similar models recently suggested by other…
Jets from X-ray binaries are continuously injecting matter and energy into the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM). However, there exist to date relatively few cases where jet-ISM interactions have been directly observed. We review the…