715 research outputs found
Investigating the flyby scenario for the HD 141569 system
HD 141569, a triple star system, has been intensively observed and studied
for its massive debris disk. It was rather regarded as a gravitationally bound
triple system but recent measurements of the HD 141569A radial velocity seem to
invalidate this hypothesis. The flyby scenario has therefore to be investigated
to test its compatibility with the observations. We present a study of the
flyby scenario for the HD141569 system, by considering 3 variants: a sole
flyby, a flyby associated with one planet and a flyby with two planets. We use
analytical calculations and perform N-body numerical simulations of the flyby
encounter. The binary orbit is found to be almost fixed by the observational
constraint on a edge-on plane with respect to the observers. If the binary has
had an influence on the disk structure, it should have a passing time at the
periapsis between 5000 and 8000 years ago and a distance at periapsis between
600 and 900 AU. The best scenario for reproducing the disk morphology is a
flyby with only 1 planet. For a 2 Mj (resp. 8 Mj) planet, its eccentricity must
be around 0.2 (resp. below 0.1). In the two cases, its apoapsis is about 130
AU. Although the global disk shape is reasonably well reproduced, some features
cannot be explain by the present model and the likehood of the flyby event
remains an issue. Dynamically speaking, HD 141569 is still a puzzling system
Gravitational Stirring in Planetary Debris Disks
We describe gravitational stirring models of planetary debris disks using a
new multi-annulus planetesimal evolution code. The current code includes
gravitational stirring and dynamical friction; future studies will include
coagulation, fragmentation, Poynting-Robertson drag, and other physical
processes. We use the results of our calculations to investigate the physical
conditions required for small bodies in a planetesimal disk to reach the
shattering velocity and begin a collisional cascade. Our results demonstrate
that disks composed primarily of bodies with a single size will not undergo a
collisional cascade which produces small dust grains at 30-150 AU on timescales
of 1 Gyr or smaller. Disks with a size distribution of bodies reach conditions
necessary for a collisional cascade in 10 Myr to 1 Gyr if the disk is at least
as massive as a minimum mass solar nebula and if the disk contains objects with
radii of 500 km or larger. The estimated 500 Myr survival time for these disks
is close to the median age of roughly 400 Myr derived for nearby stars with
dusty disks.Comment: 23 pages of text + 16 Figures; to appear in the Astronomical Journal,
January 200
Consideration of the relationship between Kepler and cyclotron dynamics leading to prediction of a non-MHD gravity-driven Hamiltonian dynamo
Conservation of canonical angular momentum shows that charged particles are
typically constrained to stay within a poloidal Larmor radius of a poloidal
magnetic flux surface. However, more detailed consideration shows that
particles with a critical charge to mass ratio can have zero canonical angular
momentum and so be both immune from centrifugal force and not constrained to
stay in the vicinity of a specific flux surface. Suitably charged dust grains
can have zero canonical angular momentum and in the presence of a gravitational
field will spiral inwards across poloidal magnetic surfaces toward the central
object and accumulate. This accumulation results in a gravitationally-driven
dynamo, i.e., a mechanism for converting gravitational potential energy into a
battery-like electric power source.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur
Spitzer observations of the Hyades: Circumstellar debris disks at 625 Myr of age
We use the Spitzer Space Telescope to search for infrared excess at 24, 70,
and 160 micron due to debris disks around a sample of 45 FGK-type members of
the Hyades cluster. We supplement our observations with archival 24 and 70
micron Spitzer data of an additional 22 FGK-type and 11 A-type Hyades members
in order to provide robust statistics on the incidence of debris disks at 625
Myr of age an era corresponding to the late heavy bombardment in the Solar
System. We find that none of the 67 FGK-type stars in our sample show evidence
for a debris disk, while 2 out of the 11 A-type stars do so. This difference in
debris disk detection rate is likely to be due to a sensitivity bias in favor
of early-type stars. The fractional disk luminosity, L_dust/L*, of the disks
around the two A-type stars is ~4.0E-5, a level that is below the sensitivity
of our observations toward the FGK-type stars. However, our sensitivity limits
for FGK-type stars are able to exclude, at the 2-sigma level, frequencies
higher than 12% and 5% of disks with L_dust/L* > 1.0E-4 and L_dust/L* > 5.0E-4,
respectively. We also use our sensitivity limits and debris disk models to
constrain the maximum mass of dust, as a function of distance from the stars,
that could remain undetected around our targets.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, accepted by Ap
Modeling the HD32297 Debris Disk with Far-IR Herschel Data
HD32297 is a young A-star (~30 Myr) 112 pc away with a bright edge-on debris
disk that has been resolved in scattered light. We observed the HD32297 debris
disk in the far-infrared and sub-millimeter with the Herschel Space Observatory
PACS and SPIRE instruments, populating the spectral energy distribution (SED)
from 63 to 500{\mu}m. We aimed to determine the composition of dust grains in
the HD32297 disk through SED modeling, using geometrical constraints from the
resolved imaging to break degeneracies inherent in SED modeling. We found the
best fitting SED model has 2 components: an outer ring centered around 110 AU,
seen in the scattered light images, and an inner disk near the habitable zone
of the star. The outer disk appears to be composed of grains > 2{\mu}m
consisting of silicates, carbonaceous material, and water ice with an abundance
ratio of 1:2:3 respectively and 90% porosity. These grains appear consistent
with cometary grains, implying the underlying planetesimal population is
dominated by comet-like bodies. We also discuss the 3.7{\sigma} detection of [C
II] emission at 158{\mu}m with the Herschel PACS Spectrometer, making HD32297
one of only a handful of debris disks with circumstellar gas detected.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical
Journa
Structuring the HD 141569 A circumstellar dust disk. Impact of eccentric bound stellar companions
Scattered light images of the optically thin dust disk around the 5 Myr old
star HD141569 have revealed its complex asymmetric structure. We show in this
paper that the surface density inferred from the observations presents
similarities with that expected from a circumprimary disk within a highly
eccentric binary system. We assume that either the two M stars in the close
vicinity of HD141569 are bound companions or at least one of them is an
isolated binary companion. We discuss the resulting interaction with an
initially axisymmetric disk. This scenario accounts for the formation of a
spiral structure, a wide gap in the disk and a broad faint extension outside
the truncation radius of the disk after 10-15 orbital periods with no need for
massive companion(s) in the midst of the disk resolved in scattered light. The
simulations match the observations and the star age if the perturber is on an
elliptic orbit with a periastron distance of 930 AU and an eccentricity from
0.7 to 0.9. We find that the numerical results can be reasonably well
reproduced using an analytical approach proposed to explain the formation of a
spiral structure by secular perturbation of a circumprimary disk by an external
bound companion. We also interpret the redness of the disk in the visible
reported by Clampin et al.(2003) and show that short-lived grains one order of
magnitude smaller than the blow-out size limit are abundant in the disk. The
most probable reason for this is that the disk sustains high collisional
activity. Finally we conclude that additional processes are required to clear
out the disk inside 150 AU and that interactions with planetary companions
possibly coupled with the remnant gas disk are likely candidates.Comment: 13 pages. Accepted for publication in A&A. MPEG amd AVI animations +
paper available at : http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~augereau/newresults.htm
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