RESEARCH INTERESTS

Solar Variability and Sun-Earth Connection

This is what I am working on since April, 2001.
Here is our Sun-Earth page
at Max-Planck Institut fuer Aeronomie, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

Dust in Vega-Type Systems

This is a relatively new and amazingly interesting area! I promised to write more about this but never found time, sorry. Just read my review 'Dust in young solar systems' (In: Dust in the Solar System and Other Planetary Systems (Eds. S.F. Green et al.), COSPAR Coll. Ser., 15, 201-216. Other papers:
ApJ 2000
A&A 2000
A&A 2003
A&A 2004

Dust around Herbig Ae/Be Stars

These stars are the main object of my study at the moment. Herbig Ae/Be (HAeBe) stars are young stars with masses of about 1.5-8 solar ones surrounded by dusty shells. Being still pre-main-sequence objects HAeBe stars are older than the so called Young Stellar Objects (YSO) which are deeply embeded in their parent dust clouds and seen only in the infrared (look at the scheme). With time HAeBe stars have lost the major part of the circumstellar material and become visible in the visual range, but yet they have large infrared excesses over the black body emission. These stars, however, are younger than Vega-type stars - main-sequence stars surrounded by dust disks - and most probably represent their early evolutionary stages. The lower-mass (0.5-2 solar masses) counterparts of HAeBe stars are T Tau stars which are believed to be precursors of Solar system-type objects. Here are some HAeBe stars-related (probably outdated) links. If you want to know more, you may also read my PhD thesis (in Russian):

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Optical Constants Database

Together with my collegues I worked on the Database of Optical Constants for Astronomy which is now open for use.
Enter the where you will find more details.