Related papers: Modelling the Astronomical Silicate Features: I. O…
Interplanetary dust (IPD) is thought to be recently supplied from asteroids and comets. Grain properties of the IPD can give us the information about the environment in the proto-solar system, and can be traced from the shapes of silicate…
Astronomical observations and analysis of stardust isolated from meteorites have revealed a highly diverse interstellar and circumstellar grain inventory, including a wide range of amorphous materials and crystalline compounds (silicates…
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of wide-field sky surveys to search for a variety of transient objects. Using relatively short focal lengths, the optics of these systems produce undersampled stellar images often marred by a…
Absorption lines in the spectra of distant quasars whose sightlines pass through foreground galaxies provide a valuable tool to probe the dust and gas compositions of the interstellar medium (ISM) in galaxies. The first evidence of silicate…
Understanding of the formation and evolution of the Solar System requires understanding key and common materials found on and in planetary bodies. Mineral mixing and its implications on planetary body formation is a topic of high interest…
The basic tenets of the alternative interpretation to be presented here are that the spectral profiles of the star light polarization peaks observed in the visible and near IR are a result of the optical properties of silicate grains in the…
Cold dust grains emission in the FIR/submm is usually expressed as a modified black body law in which the dust mass absorption coefficient (MAC), is described with a temperature- and wavelength-independent emissivity spectral index, beta.…
Spectral retrieval has long been a powerful tool for interpreting planetary remote sensing observations. Flexible, parameterised, agnostic models are coupled with inversion algorithms in order to infer atmospheric properties directly from…
The Aitken method is a useful approach for decomposing mid-IR polarimetry of silicates in astronomical sources into emissive and absorptive components. Here we extend this method to include the effects of polarization caused by scattering…
The increasing use of ML in astronomy introduces important questions about interpretability. Due to their complexity and non-linear nature, it can be challenging to understand their decision-making process. While these models can…
We present a model for the diffuse interstellar dust that explains the observed wavelength-dependence of extinction, emission, linear and circular polarisation of light. The model is set-up with a small number of parameters. It consists of…
Molecular alignment underpins optical, mechanical, and thermal properties of materials, however, its direct measurement from volumes with micrometer dimensions is not accessible, especially, for structurally complex bio-materials. How the…
In recent years it has become common practice to divide observed transit absorption spectra by synthetic absorption spectra computed for the transit of an atmosphere-less planet. This action supposedly corrects the observed absorption…
We present a technique to synthesise telluric absorption and emission features both for in-situ wavelength calibration and for their removal from astronomical spectra. While the presented technique is applicable for a wide variety of…
There are indications that interstellar and interplanetary dust grains have an inhomogeneous and fluffy structure. We investigate different methods to describe light scattering by such composite particles. Both a model of layered particles…
Understanding the interaction between hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and silicate surfaces is crucial for elucidating the prebiotic processes occurring on interstellar grain cores, as well as in cometary and meteoritic matrices. In this study, we…
A composite dust grain model which simultaneously explains the observed interstellar extinction, polarization, IR emission and the abundance constraints, is required. We present a composite grain model, which is made up of a host silicate…
We present here the first infrared spectra of meteoritic SiC grains. The mid-infrared transmission spectra of meteoritic SiC grains isolated from the Murchison meteorite were measured in the wavelength range 2.5--16.5 micron, in order to…
In the interstellar medium (ISM), the formation of complex organic molecules (COMs) is largely facilitated by surface reactions. However, in cold dark clouds, thermal desorption of COMs is inefficient because of the lack of thermal energy…
In this work the potential mineral identification of meteorites is analysed for the mid-infrared range, to evaluate observational possibilities for future missions targeting small body surfaces. Three carbonaceous and three ordinary…