Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
May 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008aas...212.5704s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #212, #57.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.252
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Studies of interstellar dust have always relied heavily upon Laboratory Astrophysics for interpretation. Laboratory values, in the broad sense that includes theory, are needed for the most basic act of measuring interstellar abundances, to the more complex determination of what grains are responsible for particular extinction. The symbiotic relationship between astronomical observations and Laboratory Astrophysics has prompted both fields to move forward, especially in the era of high-resolution ultraviolet spectroscopy when new elemental species could be interpreted and observations were able to show the limits of laboratory determinations. Thanks to this synergy, we currently have a good idea of the quantity of the most abundant elements incorporated into dust in diffuse neutral interstellar clouds: carbon, oxygen, iron, silicon and magnesium. Now the task is to figure out how, chemically and physically, those elements are integrated into interstellar grains. We can do this by comparing extinction curves to grain populations in radiative transfer models. The limitation at the present time is the availability of optical constants in the infrared through ultraviolet for species that are likely to exist in dust, i.e., those that are easy to form in the physical environments around stars and in molecular clouds. Extinction in some lines of sight can be fit within current abundance limits and with the optical constants that are available. However the inability to reproduce other extinction curves suggests that optical constants can be improved, either in quality for compounds that have been measured, or quantity in the sense of providing data for more materials. This talk will address the current state and the future of dust studies in the diffuse neutral interstellar medium.
This work is supported by the grant HST-AR-10979.01-A from the Space Telescope Science Institute to Whitman College.
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