Traditional laboratory studies on dust-ice systems have proved how the nature of the dust surface significantly affects ice structure and reactivity. Although the surface composition effects have been widely studied recently, no attention has been paid to the dust sizes. We show how dust the grains size and topography, as well as their composition, affects their interaction with light and the morphology of water ice mantles on top of them.

We report the results of infrared spectroscopic observations of embedded high-mass young stellar objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The CH3OH ice absorption band as well as the 3.47 μm absorption band are detected toward the embedded sources in the LMC. The properties of these spectral bands in the low metallicity environment are investigated based on comparisons with Galactic embedded sources.

We highlight the recent experimental results on laser-driven radiative shock waves of astrophysical interests using kJ PALS laser facility. The generated shock is probed instantaneously by X-ray laser (λ = 21.2 nm) showing an unambiguous shock structure that includes both the post-shock and the precursor.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an infrared-optimized astrophysics observatory to be launched in 2018. JWST is designed to find and study the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, to peer through dusty clouds to see star and planet formation at high spatial resolution, to obtain spectra for characterizing exoplanet atmospheres, and of rocky and icy bodies throughout the Solar System. Laboratory Astrophysics needs are related to molecular/solid data for exoplanet atmospheres and rocky/icy surfaces in the Solar System.

Recently Entoto observatory and research Center launched two 1-m twining telescopes, located on the Entoto mountain in the suburb of Addis Ababa. These telescopes, equipped with four CCDs and echelle spectrograph, will be used for observations of the different types of variable stars, X-ray binaries, double stars, star clusters, exo-planets etc.