Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 September 2002
We have studied the effects of the laboratory-measured, temperature-dependent dust emissivity indices on the FIR/sub-mmemission properties of amorphous silicate and amorphous carbonaceousdust. When the experimentally-determined temperature dependence of thedust emissivity index is taken into account we find temperatures thatcan differ by as much as 1.5 K and emissivity indices that can differby ~15%, with respect to the values obtained using publishedrefractive index data as is to calculate these quantities. Inaddition, we find that the observed diffuse ISM dust temperature of~17.5 K and emissivity index of 2 can seemingly be produced witha mixture of amorphous carbon and silicate grains only iftemperature-dependent dust emissivity indices are adopted. We findthat dust masses determined using the temperature-dependent dustemissivity indices are not significantly different from those derivedusing standard dust properties.