INTERPLANETARY DUST

Conceived more than six years ago, this book took much effort to develop, and several updates in parts of the book became necessary because significant ad­ vances in the field of Interplanetary Dust had occurred. Now, at the beginning of the new millennium, this book provides up-to-date coverage of all major aspects of dust in the Solar System. The volume is conceived as a source book for researchers in the field as well as a graduate-level textbook. In order to achieve the highest standard the individual chapters are written by experts in the field, preserving the somewhat different style and language of the sub-topic. The book follows the comprehensive review of the "Cosmic Dust" field assembled by Tony McDonnell more than 20 years ago. That book covered dust in its various physical appearances as the common theme, but it described phenomena that appeared rather unrelated. The topics ranged from zodiacal light over lunar craters to dust particles collected in the atmosphere, from interstellar dust to comets, and from dust dynamics to laboratory simulation of dusty phenomena.

Dust in interplanetary space has many faces: dust originating from comets and asteroids, and interstellar dust sweeping through our solar system. These three components have a genetic relationship: interstellar dust is the solid phase of interstellar matter from which stars and planets form. Cometary dust is the most pristine material from the early solar nebula, and dust from asteroids is material modified during the formation of the solar system. Dusty planetary rings are analogues of the interplanetary dust cloud in their own right. This handbook on the physics of interplanetary dust will be of interest to a broad readership, including astronomers, space scientists and engineers. The following topics are covered in the book: - historical perspectives - optical and thermal properties of interplanetary dust - cometary dust - near-Earth dust environment - meteors - laboratory analysis of collected dust grains - in situ measurements of cosmic dust - impirical modelling of the zodiacal dust cloud - instrumentation for detection and analysis of dust - physical processes affecting dust in space - light scattering by dust grains - orbital evolution of interplanetary dust - dusty planetary rings - interstellar and circumstellar dust