Related papers: Cloudshine: New Light on Dark Clouds
This paper reviews statistical methods recently developed to reconstruct and analyze dark matter mass maps from weak lensing observations. The field of weak lensing is motivated by the observations made in the last decades showing that the…
The simple physics of microlensing provides a well-understood tool with which to probe the atmospheres of distant stars in the Galaxy and Local Group with high magnification and resolution. Recent results in measuring stellar surface…
Context. Extinction and emission of dust models need for observational constraints to be validated. The coreshine phenomenon has already shown the importance of scattering in the 3 to 5 micron range and its ability to validate dust…
We present a semi-empirical model for the infrared emission of dust around star-forming sites in galaxies. Our approach combines a simple model of radiative transfer in dust clouds with a state-of-the-art model of the microscopic optical…
Progress in understanding star formation requires detailed observational constraints on the initial conditions, i.e. dense clumps and cores in giant molecular clouds that are on the verge of gravitational instability. Such structures have…
Dust emission is an important tool in studies of star-forming clouds, as a tracer of column density and indirectly via the dust evolution that is connected to the history and physical conditions of the clouds. We examine radiative transfer…
Observations at long wavelengths, in the wide interval from a few to 1000 micron, are essential to study diffuse media in galaxies, including all kinds of atomic, ionic and molecular gases and dust grains. Hence they are particularly suited…
Using stellar dynamics and strong gravitational lensing as complementary probes, Sand et al. (2002, 2003) have recently claimed strong evidence for shallow dark matter density profiles in several lensing clusters, which may conflict with…
We use a new contour-based map analysis technique to measure the mass and size of molecular cloud fragments continuously over a wide range of spatial scales (0.05 < r / pc < 10), i.e., from the scale of dense cores to those of entire…
Context. Dust is a good tracer of cold dark clouds but its column density is difficult to quantify. Aims. We want to check whether the far-infrared and submillimeter high-resolution data from Herschel SPIRE and PACS cameras combined with…
Observations of dark cloud cores have been carried out in the mid-infrared using ISOCAM and in the far-infrared using ISOPHOT, both aboard the Infrared Space Observatory. The cores are in most cases detected in emission at 200 and 170…
We present maps of the cosmic large-scale structure around the twelve most distant galaxy clusters from the Massive Cluster Survey (MACS) as traced by the projected surface density of galaxies on the cluster red sequence. Taken with the…
Context: Infrared dark clouds are the coldest and densest portions of giant molecular clouds. The most massive ones represent some of the most likely birthplaces for the next generation of massive stars in the Milky Way. Because a strong…
The question of the nature of the dark matter in the Universe remains one of the most outstanding unsolved problems in basic science. One of the best motivated particle physics candidates is the lightest supersymmetric particle, assumed to…
Accurate four-dimensional (4D) precipitation information is essential for understanding the Earth's energy and water cycles, yet remains observationally unresolved at global scales. Conventional theory holds that geostationary infrared…
Flash illumination is widely used in imaging under low-light environments. However, illumination intensity falls off with propagation distance quadratically, which poses significant challenges for flash imaging at a long distance. We…
Normal field stars located behind dense clouds are a valuable resource in interstellar astrophysics, as they provide continua in which to study phenomena such as gas-phase and solid-state absorption features, interstellar extinction and…
We show how observations of multiply-imaged quasars at high redshift can be used as a probe of dark matter clumps (subhalos with masses ~ 10^9 solar masses) within the virialized extent of more massive lensing halos. A large abundance of…
Studies of the diffuse X-ray emitting gas in galaxy clusters have provided powerful constraints on cosmological parameters and insights into plasma astrophysics. However, measurements of the faint cluster outskirts have become possible only…
Galaxy clusters are powerful probes of astrophysics and cosmology through gravitational lensing: the clusters' mass, dominated by 85% dark matter, distorts background light. Yet, mass reconstruction lacks the scalability and large-scale…