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It is estimated that a star brighter than visual magnitude 17 is undergoing a detectable gravitational microlensing event, somewhere on the sky, at any given time. It is assumed that both lenses and sources are normal stars drawn from a…
Gas in the interstellar matter is generally organized in filamentary structures, which may be also relevant for a complementary explanation of the dark matter in the Galactic halo. We examine the possibility that such structures may act as…
Before an exoplanet transit, atmospheric refraction bends light into the line of sight of an observer. The refracted light forms a stellar mirage, a distorted secondary image of the host star. I model this phenomenon and the resultant…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
A broad array of interstellar absorption features that appear in the ultraviolet spectra of bright sources allows us to measure the abundances and ionization states of many important heavy elements that exist as free atoms in the…
Stars and star clusters form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest…
We use data on extreme radio scintillation to demonstrate that this phenomenon is associated with hot stars in the solar neighbourhood. The ionized gas responsible for the scattering is found at distances up to 1.75pc from the host star,…
Theory predicts that a plane wave scattered by a thin slab of gas yields, in the forward direction and under specific circumstances, a larger irradiance than would be observed in the absence of the gas. This enhanced Rayleigh scattering…
Convection is ubiquitous in stars and occurs under many different conditions. Here we explore convection in main-sequence stars through two lenses: dimensionless parameters arising from stellar structure and parameters which emerge from the…
Atmospheric scintillation caused by optical turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere can be the dominant source of noise in ground-based photometric observations of bright targets, which is a particular concern for ground-based exoplanet…
The effect of stars on the lensing properties of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center is similar to the effect of planets on microlensing by a star. We show that the dense stellar cluster around SgrA* increases by factors of a…
Presence of dust in galaxies removes half or more of the stellar energy from the UV-optical budget of the Universe and has profound impact on our understanding of how galaxies evolve. Measures of opacity in local galaxies are reviewed…
Convection and turbulence in stellar atmospheres have a significant effect on the emergent flux from late-type stars. The theoretical advancements in convection modelling over recent years have proved challenging for the observers to obtain…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
It is shown that a collection of photons with nearly the same frequency exhibits a "condensation" type of phenomenon corresponding to a peak intensity. The observed cosmic background radiation can be explained from this standpoint in terms…
Recent imaging of protoplanetary disks with high resolution and contrast have revealed a striking variety of substructure. Of particular interest are cases where near-infrared scattered light images show evidence for low-intensity annular…
We revisit the GSC5249-01240 light curve obtained during its occultation by Saturn's North polar region. In addition to refractive scintillations, the power spectrum of intensity fluctuations shows an enhancement of power between refractive…
The selective light absorption in space has been raised in astronomical literature. The substance producing the absorption must have some mass; thus the question is how large it is. We develop a dynamical model of the Milky Way system,…
As a planet transits the face of a star, it accelerates along the line-of-sight. The changing delay in the propagation of photons produces an apparent deceleration of the planet across the sky throughout the transit. This persistent…
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…