AAO Colloquium
Thursday 18 November 2010
3:30pm AAO Conference Room
Why you should care about dust!
Joerg Fischera, ANU
Although only a small fraction of the total mass (less than 1%) of the interstellar
medium is condensed in grains, dust will play a tremendous role in various modern
astrophysical disciplines for the next decade. Several important effects arise from
the ability of interstellar dust to attenuate light through dust absorption and
scattering and to reprocess the absorbed emission to infrared radiation.
In the talk I will highlight some essential problems for observational astrophysics
and will discuss possible solutions based on our
current understanding of the physical properties of interstellar grains.
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