Offers an overview of interstellar dust and the interstellar medium. This book emphasizes astronomical formulae and astronomical problems to give a solid foundation for the further study of interstellar medium. It addresses the absorption and scattering of dust, its creation in old stars, as well as emission, cohesion, and electrical charge.
On the whole the book is excellent in its content as well as its presentation. It contains a wealth of valuable information relating to the physics of interstellar grains, essentially updating and replacing the existing textbooks on this subject. It exhaustively covers the theory of light scattering relevant to grains, the processes of grain heating and infrared radiation. Also included are valuable sections on radiative transfer in clouds and grain dynamics. Workers in the field of interstellar dust must find this a most valuable reference book to possess.-Contemporary Physics, Volume 51, Issue 6, 2010
Krügel's new book is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses and is tremendously appealing because it requires no prior knowledge of astronomy. It can be used as a textbook, a self-study guide for graduate students or more senior academics, or a general reference for active researchers to delve into as needed. A major problem in investigating cosmic dust is that a proper study incorporates so many aspects of the physical sciences, and current texts rarely bring those topics together in such a coherent and concise form as Krügel does.-Angela Speck, University of Missouri-Columbia, Physics Today, October 2008
