We have found that individual presolar silicon carbide (SiC) dust grains from supernovae show a positive correlation between 49Ti and 28Si excesses, which is attributed to the radioactive decay of the short-lived (t½ = 330 days) 49V to 49Ti in the inner highly 28Si-rich Si/S zone. The 49V-49Ti chronometer shows that these supernova SiC dust grains formed at least 2 years after their parent star...

Recently Taniguchi and Ohyama found that the higher CO to CO integrated intensity ratios at a transition J=1–0, R = I(CO)/I(CO) ∼ > 20, in a sample of starburst merging galaxies such as Arp 220 are mainly attributed to the depression of CO emission with respect to CO. Investigating the same sample of galaxies analyzed by Taniguchi & Ohyama, we find that there is a tight, almost linear correlati...

The 8–14 µm emission spectra of 12 T Tauri stars in the Taurus/Auriga dark clouds and in the TW Hydrae association obtained with the Infrared Spectro-graph (IRS 1) on board Spitzer are analyzed. Assuming the 10 µm features originate from silicate grains in the optically thin surface layers of T Tauri disks, the 8–14 µm dust emissivity for each object is derived from its Spitzer spectrum. The em...

We describe a simple method for simulating the dynamics of small grains in a dusty gas, relevant to micron-sized grains in the interstellar medium and grains of centimetre size and smaller in protoplanetary discs. The method involves solving one extra diffusion equation for the dust fraction in addition to the usual equations of hydrodynamics. This “diffusion approximation for dust” is valid wh...

The presence of dust at high redshift requires efficient condensation of grains in SN ejecta, in accordance with current theoretical models. Yet, observations of the few well studied SNe and SN remnants imply condensation efficiencies which are about two orders of magnitude smaller. Motivated by this tension, we have (i) revisited the model of Todini & Ferrara (2001) for dust formation in the e...

Primitive meteorites, interplanetary dust particles, and comets contain dust grains that formed around stars that lived their lives before the solar system formed. These remarkable objects have been intensively studied since their discovery a little over twenty years ago and they provide samples of other stars that can be studied in the laboratory in exquisite detail with modern analytical tool...

Spacecraft investigations during the last ten years have vastly improved our knowledge about dust in the Jovian system. All Galilean satellites, and probably all smaller satellites as well, are sources of dust in the Jovian system. In-situ measurements with the dust detectors on board the Ulysses and Galileo spacecraft have for the first time demonstrated the electromagnetic interaction of char...

It was recently discovered that the temperature in the surface layer of externally heated optically thick gray dust clouds increases with the optical depth for some distance from the surface, as opposed to the normal decrease in temperature with distance in the rest of the cloud. This temperature inversion is a result of efficient absorption of diffuse flux from the cloud interior by the surfac...

Thermal fluctuations in the magnetization of interstellar grains will produce magnetic dipole emission at ν ∼< 100 GHz. We show how to calculate absorption and emission from small particles composed of material with magnetic as well as dielectric properties. The Kramers-Kronig relations for a dusty medium are generalized to include the possibility of magnetic grains. The magnetic permeability a...