Infrared dust spectral signatures from AIRS

Dust and Infrared Polarization Signatures

An outline is presented of observations and interpretations of polarization in the near and mid-infrared. Grain alignment occurs in the diffuse interstellar medium, in dense and massive molecular clouds and in HII regions as well as the boundaries of diffuse quiescent clouds; the resulting polarization displays features due to thermal excitation of molecular bonds and these are discussed in ter...

Atmospheric Infrared Sounder ( AIRS ) AIRS Level 1 C Algorithm Theoretical Basis

What Can We Learn from the Infrared Spectral Energy Distributions of Dust Disks ?

The spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of dust disks are widely used to infer dust properties (compositions and sizes) and disk structures (dust spatial distributions) which might be indicative of the presence or absence of planets or smaller bodies like asteroids and comets in the disk. Based on modelling of the SED of HR 4796A, a young main-sequence star with the largest fractional infrared...

Star Formation Rate from Dust Infrared Emission

We examine what types of galaxies the conversion formula from dust infrared (IR) luminosity into the star formation rate (SFR) derived by Kennicutt (1998) is applicable to. The ratio of the observed IR luminosity, LIR, to the intrinsic bolometric luminosity of the newly (. 10 Myr) formed stars, LSF, of a galaxy can be determined by a mean dust opacity in the interstellar medium and the activity...

Infrared adaptive spectral imagers for direct detection of spectral signatures and hyperspectral imagery

Field test results are presented for a prototype long-wave adaptive imager that provides both hyperspectral imagery and contrast imagery based on the direct application of hyperspectral detection algorithms in hardware. Programmable spatial light modulators are used to provide both spectral and spatial resolution using a single element detector. Programmable spectral and spatial detection filte...