Exploring the Dust Population in Cold Diffuse Clouds
  The formation and evolution of cold diffuse clouds (CDCs), the parent objects
of dense molecular clouds, affects both the star formation process and that of
larger-scale galactic evolution. We have begun a pilot study of one CDC's dust
content, with the goal of quantifying the abundances of different types of dust
and relating these to the relative abundance of molecular gas, the cloud's
physical properties, and its general stage of development. Using photometry
from AKARI and other surveys, we have extracted a sample spectral energy
distribution (SED) of the CDC dust thermal emission over the near-infrared to
submillimeter range. The extracted SED closely resembles others in the
literature, confirming our isolation of the cloud emission from other sources
along the sight line. We plan to fit this SED with dust models at each position
in the cloud, automating our procedure to map out the structure of this CDC and
others.
