Radar Detection of Interstellar Dust
Abstract
As primordial building material of complexes like our own solar system, dust is centrally important in the evolution of such planetary systems. Circumstellar dust can be sensed associated with Young Stellar Objects, IR excess stars and forms the ejecta of red giants, carbon-rich stars and supernovae. Interstellar dust can be cumulatively sensed over astronomically long sight-lines by the extinction, scattering and polarisation of starlight. The direct detection of interstellar dust (ISD) particles flowing into the solar system is important because such observations can directly probe the local cloud interstellar dust environment and can sense discrete stellar sources. The Advanced Meteor Orbit Radar (AMOR) is a facility designed to measure the trajectories of dust impacting the Earth's atmosphere: the continuously operating radar is able to archive a large (∼ 10^6) data-base of dust trajectories and so is able to map the inflow directions of interstellar material into the solar system. Such Earth-based mapping of ISD dynamics complements the in-situ impact detections by space missions such as Ulysses and Stardust.
- Publication:
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EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly
- Pub Date:
- April 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003EAEJA.....4716B