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The role of dust in the formation of stars
The book, The role of dust in the formation of stars, results from an ESO workshop co-organised by one of the ISO SOC astronomers. It is published in the early phase of ESA's Infrared Space Observatory mission and provides for a comprehensive summary of the knowledge in this field of astronomy. In a series of invited review talks and numerous contributed papers the role of dust in the formation of stars is described and discussed.
Dust is ubiquitous in star forming regions, protostars, young stellar objects and stars in various pre-main sequence stages up to perfectly `normal' main sequence stars. Consequently the authors address the topic from rather different viewpoints. Observers describe and analyze signatures of dust in the entire electromagnetic spectrum from the radio to the ultra-violet. Successful modelling of these signatures with radiative transfer codes is demonstrated for a great variety of sources. Astrophysical laboratory researchers report on studies of synthetic prototype samples of interstellar dust. Other topics covered in this book are e.g. dust processing, dust agglomeration, dust coupling to the magnetic field or dust electric charging. Moreover the reader will learn about dust chemical composition, gas-phase chemistry and photo-chemistry. From a mostly theoretical viewpoint the role of dust as a catalytic agent for star formation is described in great detail.
SPRINGER Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 1996, ISBN - 3-540-61462-1, 461 pages, $ 38.- (US).
Tue Jan 7 17:47:45 MET 1997