Abstract
Extended Red Emission (ERE) is a widely observed optical emission process, present in a wide range of circumstellar and interstellar environments in the Milky Way galaxy as well as other galaxies. Definitive identifications of the ERE carriers and the ERE process are still a matter of debate. Numerous models have been proposed in recent decades, often developed without consideration of the growing body of observational constraints, which by now invalidate many of these models. This review focuses on the most well-established observational constraints which should help to delineate the way toward a generally accepted explanation of the ERE and an understanding of its place in the radiation physics of the interstellar medium.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge Judy Schmidt for allowing us to reproduce the image of the Red Rectangle nebula shown in Fig. 1. The image is a result of her reprocessing of available images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/10159700064/. We also wish to thank the anonymous referee for constructive suggestions which aided in making this review more complete.
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Witt, A.N., Lai, T.SY. Extended red emission: observational constraints for models. Astrophys Space Sci 365, 58 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-020-03766-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-020-03766-w