Related papers: Small and Very Small Interstellar Grains
The interstellar medium (ISM) seems to have a significant surplus of oxygen which was dubbed as the "O crisis": independent of the adopted interstellar reference abundance, the total number of O atoms depleted from the gas phase far exceeds…
The degree to which interstellar grains align with respect to the interstellar magnetic field depends on disaligning as well as aligning mechanisms. For decades, it was assumed that disalignment was due primarily to the random angular…
We report spectra obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope in the wavelength range between 14 microns and 35 microns of 19 nearby main-sequence stars with infrared excesses. The six stars with strong dust emission show no recognizable…
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…
Small amounts of pre-solar grains have survived in the matrices of primitive meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. Their detailed study in the laboratory with modern analytical tools provides highly accurate and detailed information…
Recent results on nearby interstellar gas and interstellar byproducts within the solar system are used to select among the equilibrium radiative transfer models of the nearest interstellar material of Slavin and Frisch (2002). Assuming…
We examine the thermal infrared spectra of large dust grains of different chemical composition and mineralogy. Strong resonances in the optical properties result in detectable spectral structure even when the grain is much larger than the…
Dark matter interactions with massless or very light Standard Model particles, as photons or neutrinos, may lead to a suppression of the matter power spectrum at small scales and of the number of low mass haloes. Bounds on the dark matter…
The galactic environment of the Sun varies over short timescales as the Sun and interstellar clouds travel through space. Small variations in the dynamics, ionization, density, and magnetic field strength of the interstellar medium (ISM)…
We consider the depletion of elements from the interstellar gas onto a population of very small dust grains. Adopting a grain model in which of order 4% of the cosmic C abundance is in grains with radii <= 10 Angstroms, we find that the…
The near- and mid-IR spectrum of many astronomical objects is dominated by emission bands due to UV-excited polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and evaporating very small grains (eVSG). Previous studies with the ISO, Spitzer and AKARI…
We consider the lifecycle of dust introduced into the hot interstellar medium in isolated elliptical galaxies. Dust grains are ejected into galactic-scale cooling flows in large ellipticals by normal mass loss from evolving red giants.…
Scattered light images of circumstellar disks play an important role in characterizing the planet forming environments around young stars. The characteristic size of the scattering dust grains can be estimated from the observed brightness…
I review my work with Bruce Draine on dust emissivity at microwave frequencies (3 cm - 3 mm). This emissivity explains the recently detected "anomalous" component of the galactic foreground emission. Both small (a<0.001 micron) and large…
The properties of interstellar clouds near the Sun are ordered by the Loop I superbubble and by the interstellar radiation field. Comparisons of the kinematics and magnetic field of the interstellar gas flowing past the Sun, including the…
The boundary conditions of the heliosphere are set by the ionization, density and composition of inflowing interstellar matter. Constraining the properties of the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC) at the heliosphere requires radiative transfer…
The mini-spiral is a feature of the interstellar medium in the central ~2 pc of the Galactic center. It is composed of several streamers of dust and ionised and atomic gas with temperatures between a few 100 K to 10^4 K. There is evidence…
Perturbations due to the planets combined with the non-Coulomb nature of the gravitational potential in the Sun imply that WIMPs that are gravitationally captured by scattering in surface layers of the Sun can evolve into orbits that no…
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…
For 117 clusters of galaxies, we explore the detectability of intracluster dust grains by current and future infrared facilities, taking into account both collisional heating and sputtering of grains by ambient plasma. If the dust grains…