DR. ANDREA MONETI Ingénieur de Recherche Institut d'Astrophysique, Paris 98bis Blvd Arago, F-75014 Paris, France  Tel: +33 (0)1 4432 8067  |  Fax: +33 (0)1 4432 8001 email: moneti@iap.fr Professional web page   |    Leisure web page Curriculum Vitae   |    Career Highlights   |    Publications

 It follows that my research interests are changing: moving (1) further to the infrared, namely 0.3 - 3 mm, the wavelength range in which the Planck satellite will observe, (2) further away in space, basically as far as one can go with light, that is to the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, and (3) from the formation of stars to the formation of the universe! Curiously, this is bringing me back to cosmology, which is what pushed me towards astronomy (and astrophysics) in the first place, back in the mid 70's.

• Recent star formation in the central regions of the Galaxy:

... continuing to study the Quintuplet Cluster, but also mining the ISOGAL data for evidence of recent star formation there. One specific question in the respect is the form of the extinction law toward the Galactic Centre.
 
 
• The Initial Mass Function, especially for low-mass stars and brown dwarfs:

... analysing 1.6 micron images of 30Dor obtained with NICMOS on HST. I am also analysing the ISOGAL data on NGC 6611, in combination with deep ground-based near infrared data
 
 
• Pre-Main Sequence binary stars:

... on the back burner right now. I have an excellent set of JHK images of most visual binary T Tauri stars within 200 pc. The detailed analysis is pending.
 

Full field - 8 deg wide

The Arches and the bubble

The Pistol region

Mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy of the enigmatic cocoon stars in the Quintuplet Cluster
A.Moneti, S.R.Stolovy, J.A.D.L.Blommaert, & D.F.Figer, A&A 366, 106 (2001)
pdf from A&A (522 kb) | astro-ph/0010558
This is the Galactic Centre reddening law used in this paper (and a table of the values.)

Cold H2O and CO ice and gas toward the Galactic Center
A.Moneti, J. Cernicharo, & J.R. Pardo ApJLett, 549, 203 (2001)
pdf from ApJLett (105kb) - astro-ph/00120292

[ArII], [NeII], and [NeIII] forbidden line images of the Pistol Nebula extracted from the ISOCAM-CVF datacube; a continuum image is also shown for comparison. And also a composite, with [ArII] in blue, [NeII] in green, and [NeIII] in red.

ISOCAM-CVF datacube of the Pistol Star/Nebula and of the Quintuplet Cluster: The Pistol Star is the brightest source at short wavelengths. The full Pistol Nebula appears at about 8 um, just before the deep silicate absorption. The top part of the Pistol Nebula can be seen also in the Quintuplet datacube, which also shows the increasing size of the point-spread function and the different temperatures of the Quintuplet sources. In all figures North is to the top, and East is to the left.

Clusters and PMS stars

The 30 Doradus cluster: a mosaic of the cluster, made from nine NIC2 images; and a smaller size image of the same. The field is 1 arcmin on the side and is made of pixels of 0.075 arsec. It required four orbits of HST time. The core was observed in parallel with NIC1: the field is 10 arcsec on the side, and pixels are 0.004 arcsec.

Truecolor view made of the 30 Dorauds from WFPC2 V and R images (Hunter et al. 1996), and H from NICMOS (thank you Mark McCaughrean. For more details, see Zinnecker et al. (2000).

Some views of M16/NGC6611: ISOGAL view, composite of a 7.7 and a 15 um images. The well known elephant trunks, pointing toward the upper right, are near the centre of the image. A near infrared view, made from J, H, and K images (curtesy of Mark McCaughrean), and an MSX view, made from 8, 12+15, and 22 um images. In the latter, the orientation is Galactic, and the elephant trunks are located slighlty below image center and point to the upper left.

HH-30 IRS observed by ISOCAM... barely visible, but there!