Related papers: Can Reflection from Grains Diagnose the Albedo?
A photon of wavelength lambda ~1 micron interacting with a dust grain of radius a_p ~ 1 mm (a "pebble") undergoes scattering in the forward direction, largely within a small characteristic diffraction angle theta_s ~ lambda/a_p ~ 100".…
(abridged) The dust content of the universe is primarily explored via its interaction with stellar photons, producing interstellar extinction. However, owing to the physical extension of the observing beam, observations may detect scattered…
Scattering and absorption of X-rays by interstellar dust is calculated for a model consisting of carbonaceous grains and amorphous silicate grains. The calculations employ realistic dielectric functions with structure near X-ray absorption…
The optical surface brightness of dark nebulae is mainly due to scattering of integrated starlight by classical dust grains. It contains information on the impinging interstellar radiation field, cloud structure, and grain scattering…
The wavelength dependences of interstellar extinction and polarization, supplemented by observed elemental abundances and the spectrum of infrared emission from dust heated by starlight, strongly constrain dust models. One dust model that…
Scattering and absorption properties at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths are calculated for an interstellar dust model consisting of carbonaceous grains and amorphous silicate grains. Polarization as a function of scattering angle is…
We calculate the scattering of X-rays by interstellar dust, for a dust model that reproduces the observed wavelength-dependent extinction and polarization of starlight. On interstellar sightlines that produce appreciable starlight…
Interstellar abundance determinations from fits to X-ray absorption edges often rely on the incorrect assumption that scattering is insignificant and can be ignored. We show instead that scattering contributes significantly to the…
The comparison, undertaken in preceding papers, of the UV observations of nebulae and of reddened stars reveals contradictory aspects of interstellar extinction. The aim of this paper is to understand the implications hidden behind the…
Multi-wavelength spectroscopy can be used to constrain the dust and gas properties in debris disks. Circumstellar dust absorbs and scatters incident stellar light. The scattered light is sometimes resolved spatially at visual and…
Spectropolarimetry from the near IR to the far UV of light scattered by dust provides a valuable diagnostic of the dust composition, grain size distribution and spatial distribution. To facilitate the use of this diagnostic, we present…
The size and composition of dust grains are critical in setting the dynamical, physical and chemical evolution of the media in which they are present. Thanks to facilities such as ALMA and in the future the SKA, their thermal emission in…
This review surveys the observed properties of interstellar dust grains: the wavelength-dependent extinction of starlight, including absorption features, from UV to IR; optical luminescence; IR emission; microwave emission; optical, UV, and…
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…
The sizes of interstellar grains are widely distributed, ranging from a few angstroms to a few micrometers. The ultraviolet (UV) and optical extinction constrains the dust in the size range of a couple hundredth micrometers to several…
We examine the possibility of using near-infrared scattering to constrain the local radiation field and the dust properties, for example, the size distribution of the grains, and maximum grain size. We use radiative transfer modelling to…
We discuss the radiative transfer theory for translucent clouds illuminated by an extended background source. First we derive a rigorous solution based on the assumption that multiple scattering produce an isotropic flux. Then we derive a…
We measure the optical spectrum of the Diffuse Galactic Light (DGL) -- the local Milky Way in reflection -- using 92,000 blank-sky spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We correlate the SDSS optical intensity in regions of blank…
Interstellar extinction includes both absorption and scattering of photons from interstellar gas and dust grains, and it has the effect of altering a source's spectrum and its total observed intensity. However, while multiple absorption…
Although interstellar grains are known to be aspherical, their actual shapes remain poorly constrained. We assess whether three continuous distributions of ellipsoidal shapes from the literature are suitable for describing the shapes of…