Criterion of the Jeans instability of interstellar gas clouds which are gravitationally coupled with weakly interacting massive particles is revisited. It is established that presence of the dark matter always reduces the Jeans length, and in turn, Jeans mass of the interstellar gas clouds. Astrophysical implications of this effect are discussed. Subject headings: dark matter — gravitation — in...

We find resolved interstellar O K, Ne K, and Fe L absorption spectra in the Chandra Low Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer spectrum of the low mass X-ray binary X0614+091. We measure the column densities in O and Ne, and find direct spectroscopic constraints on the chemical state of the interstellar O. These measurements probably probe a low-density line of sight through the Galaxy and we...

A. Introductionn.-So far oiliy interactions of cosmic rays with terrestrial matter have been investigated. If cosmic rays are present in interstellar and intergalactic space, they produce physical changes on extraterrestrial objects also. The question therefore arises if such changes are observable. The following considerations make it probable that this question is to be answered in the affirm...

A bright UV GALEX image in the direction of a dense high galactic latitude interstellar dust cloud is examined to test (and to reject) the idea that a bright extragalactic UV background radiation field exists. A GALEX “Deep Imaging Survey” image of a second high latitude region (a region almost totally free of dust) shows a similar bright background, which, clearly, cannot be due to starlight s...

Interstellar matter (ISM) sets the boundary conditions of the heliosphere and dominates the inter-planetary medium. The heliosphere configuration has varied over recent history, as the Sun emerged from the Local Bubble and entered a turbulent outflow of cloudlets originating from the Scorpius-Centaurus Association direction. Several indicators suggest that the local interstellar magnetic field ...

Introduction: Interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) collected from the Earth's stratosphere generally contain percent-level concentrations of organic matter [1]. This organic matter in IDPs is important for several reasons: 1) some IDPs contain interstellar organic matter, identified by high D/H or

Several nearby individual low column density interstellar cloudlets have been identified previously based on kinematical features evident in high-resolution Ca observations near the Sun. One of these cloudlets, the ‘Apex Cloud” (AC), is within 5 pc of the Sun in the solar apex direction. The question of which interstellar cloud will constitute the next galactic environment of the Sun in princip...

Several nearby individual low column density interstellar cloudlets have been identified based on kinematical features evident in high-resolution Ca observations near the Sun. One of these cloudlets, the ‘Apex Cloud” (AC), is within 5 pc of the Sun in the solar apex direction. The question of which interstellar cloud will constitute the next galactic environment of the Sun in principle can be d...