Related papers: Optimal column density measurements from multiband…
Astrometric surveys provide the opportunity to measure the absolute magnitudes of large numbers of stars, but only if the individual line-of-sight extinctions are known. Unfortunately, extinction is highly degenerate with stellar effective…
Scattering and absorption of light by a homogeneous distribution of intergalactic large dust grains has been proposed as an alternative, non-cosmological explanation for the faintness of Type Ia supernovae at $z\s im 0.5$. We investigate…
In this tutorial it is explained the procedure to analyze an optical emission-line spectrum produced by a nebula ionized by massive star formation. Particularly, it is described the methodology used to derive physical properties, such as…
With current near-infrared (NIR) instruments the near-infrared light scattered from interstellar clouds can be mapped over large areas. The surface brightness carries information on the line-of-sight dust column density. Therefore,…
In this contribution, we develop a model based on classical electrodynamics that describes light extinction in the presence of arbitrary aerosols. We do this by combining aerosol and light-intensity measurements performed with the…
We report results of a near--infrared imaging survey of L977, a dark cloud in Cygnus seen in projection against the plane of the Milky Way. We use measurements of the near--infrared color excess and positions of the 1628 brightest stars in…
Polarized extinction and emission from dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) are hard to interpret, as they have a complex dependence on dust optical properties, grain alignment and magnetic field orientation. This is particularly true in…
The review contains an analysis of the observed and model curves of the interstellar extinction and polarization. The observations mainly give information on dust in diffuse and translucent interstellar clouds. The features of various dust…
To investigate the distribution of dust in Sb and Sc galaxies we have analyzed near-infrared and optical surface photometry for an unbiased sample of 37 galaxies. Since light in the $K$-band is very little affected by extinction by dust,…
We provide new, high-resolution A(Ks) extinction maps of the heavily reddened Galactic midplane based on the Rayleigh-Jeans Color Excess ("RJCE") method. RJCE determines star-by-star reddening based on a combination of near- and…
The viability of the star count (Wolf) method is assessed as a means of constraining the near-infrared (NIR) extinction law toward the Corona Australis molecular cloud. Using deep $JHK_S$ photometry from the VISIONS survey, extinction maps…
We present an objective method to remove the stellar continuum emission from narrow-band images to derive emission-line images. The method is based on the skewness of the pixel histogram of the residual images. Specifically, we exploit a…
We put stringent constraints for the first time on the dust properties in the circumburst medium of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow. This is based on the optical spectrum of GRB 020813 (z=1.255), obtained with Keck I LRIS 4.65 h after the…
We map the distribution of dust in M31 at 25pc resolution, using stellar photometry from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury. We develop a new mapping technique that models the NIR color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of red giant branch…
We analyze extragalactic extinction profiles derived through gamma-ray burst afterglows, using a dust model specifically constructed on the assumption that dust grains are not immutable but respond time-dependently to the local physics.…
Large spectroscopic surveys have enabled in the recent years the computation of three-dimensional interstellar extinction maps thanks to accurate stellar atmospheric parameters and line-of-sight distances. Such maps are complementary to 3D…
Resolving high-contrast targets is a fundamental yet highly challenging task in astronomy. Using quantum estimation theory, we demonstrate that the ultimate limit for estimating the separation between two unequal-brightness thermal sources…
[ABRIDGED] Context. O stars are excellent tracers of the intervening ISM because of their high luminosity, blue intrinsic SED, and relatively featureless spectra. We are currently conducting GOSSS, which is generating a large sample of O…
We combine near-infrared (2MASS) and mid-infrared (Spitzer-IRAC) photometry to characterize the IR extinction law (1.2-8 microns) over nearly 150 degrees of contiguous Milky Way midplane longitude. The relative extinctions in 5 passbands…
In order to study the properties and effects of high Galactic latitude dust we present an analysis of 373,303 galaxies selected from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) All-Sky Survey and Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WISE) All-Sky Data…