Short-lived nuclides, now extinct in the solar system, are expected to be present in interstellar matter (ISM). Grains of ISM origin were recently discovered in the inner solar system and at Earth orbit and may accrete onto Earth after ablation in the atmosphere. A favorable matrix for detection of such extrater-restrial material is presented by deep-sea sediments with very low sedimentation ra...

The heliosphere serves as a probe of interstellar material (ISM) close to the Sun. Measurements of ISM inside and outside of the heliosphere show that we reside in typical warm partially ionized ISM that can be successfully modeled using equilibrium photoionization models. The heliosphere wake leaves a ∼ 200× 1000 AU trail in space of low density, n < 0.05 cm, cooling plasma comingled with ISM....

X-ray absorption spectroscopy provides a potentially powerful tool in determining the metal abundances in various phases of the interstellar medium (ISM). We present a case study of the sight line toward 4U 1820–303 (Galactic coordinates l, b = 2.79,−7.91 and distance = 7.6 kpc), based on Chandra Grating observations. The detection of O I, O II, O III, O VII, O VIII, and Ne IX Kα absorption lin...

We present a study the dynamic properties of EUV spicules. The selected data were obtained as time series in polar coronal holes by SUMER/SOHO. The short exposure time and the almost fixed position allow the analysis of the spicule properties such as: occurrence, lifetime, Doppler velocity, etc. Our data reveal that spicules occur repeatedly at the same location with a birth rate of around 0.1/...

In this paper we discuss the propagation of dust through the interstellar medium (ISM), and describe the destructive effects of stellar winds, jets, and supernova shock waves on interstellar dust. We review the probability that grains formed in stellar outflows or supernovae survive processing in and propagation through the ISM, and incorporate themselves relatively unprocessed into meteoritic ...

We review what is currently known about the structure of interstellar material in the solar neighborhood, emphasizing how observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have improved our understanding of how interstellar gas is distributed near the Sun. The nearby ISM is not uniform but shows variations in both temperature and metal abundances on distance scales of just a few parsecs. The o...