RSAA Colloquia / Seminars / Feast-of-Facts: Tuesday, 25 September 2018, 11:00-12:00; Duffield Lecture Theatre


Lucky Puspitarini

"Extracting Diffuse Interstellar Bands from Stellar Spectra"

Diffuse Interstellar Bands (DIBs) are enigmatic absorption features that are found in the spectra of reddened stars or other objects. Identifying the carriers of DIBs has been a longstanding challenge and is still very much a work in progress. Among of the proposed carriers are polyatomic molecules, such as fullerenes. Despite their unknown carriers, DIBs can be a potential tracer of ISM because (1) DIBs are numerous (around 500 bands are known at optical and IR wavelengths), (2) DIBs are not easily saturated, and (3) DIBs are correlated with interstellar extinction. To perform automated DIB fitting to be applied to extensive data from stellar surveys and to build DIB databases, different approaches are needed to extract DIBs from early and late type star spectra. The DIB databases can be used as a complementary tool for locating interstellar clouds and to construct 3D ISM map in the Galaxy.