The Role of Dust in the Formation of Stars: Proceedings of the ESO Workshop Held at Garching, Germany, 11–14 September 1995 (ESO Astrophysics Symposia)

Product Description This ESO workshop, which took place in September 1995 on a topic that at a first glance could be considered rather specialized, attracted an unpre­ dictably large number of scientists. This certainly reflects the importance of this field, which has lost its seemingly esoteric character, in a wider astro­ physical context. To give as much room as possible in these proceedings to the targeted talks, no presentation of the Very Large Telescope Observatory has been included. All readers missing such a presentation are reminded that up-to­ date in-depth information about the VLT status is available electronically.1 Papers were given concerning observations in the entire electromagnetic spectrum from x-rays to mm-waves, i.e., exceeding 22 octaves in frequency. The VLT as any ground-based optical observatory can only address at best 7 octaves. Nevertheless the VLT, most likely the only ground-based observa­ tory specifically designed to access all these 7 octaves of the electromagnetic spectrum practically in parallel, will undoubtedly be a tool of extreme value to this field. From the Back Cover This book, which is published in the early phase of ESA s Infrared Space Observatory mission, provides a comprehensive summary of the knowledge in this field of astronomy. In a series of invited review lectures 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. Successfull 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 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.