Orientation of cosmic dust grains

Details Orientation of cosmic dust grains Orientation of cosmic dust grains

Sep 1976

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1976ap%26ss..43..291d&link_type=abstract

Astrophysics and Space Science, vol. 43, Sept. 1976, p. 291-317. Translation.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

86

Cosmic Dust, Interstellar Extinction, Polarization (Waves), Comet Heads, Interstellar Matter, Lines Of Force, Orientation

Scientific paper

The orientation of nonspherical cosmic dust grains in anisotropic corpuscular or radiative fluxes and in the presence of a magnetic field is examined, with the grains approximated by axially symmetric ellipsoids. A comparatively small twisting of grains is shown to cause differences in the scattering of right-hand and left-hand circularly polarized photons and in the growth of angular momentum. If the period of a grain's angular-momentum precession induced by the magnetic field is shorter than the time of orientation by corpuscular or radiative flux, the distribution of grain axes becomes symmetric relative to the magnetic force lines. This orientation mechanism easily explains interstellar linear polarization observed in our Galaxy. Mechanisms of grain orientation near the Becklin-Neugebauer infrared source, in the B 96 reflection nebular near RY Tau, and in cometary heads are proposed.

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