1. Resolved debris discs around A stars in the Herschel DEBRIS survey
- Author
-
Mark Booth, Brenda C. Matthews, Mark C. Wyatt, Gaspard Duchêne, Amaya Moro-Martin, Alice Koning, Jane Greaves, Bruce Sibthorpe, Laura Vican, Jj Kavelaars, Paul Kalas, Kate Y. L. Su, David R. Rodriguez, Grant M. Kennedy, and George H. Rieke
- Subjects
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,01 natural sciences ,0103 physical sciences ,Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics ,Black-body radiation ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Physics ,Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) ,Infrared excess ,Astronomy ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Radius ,Planetary system ,Debris ,Stars ,Photometry (astronomy) ,Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics ,13. Climate action ,Space and Planetary Science ,Particle-size distribution ,Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics ,Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics - Abstract
The majority of debris discs discovered so far have only been detected through infrared excess emission above stellar photospheres. While disc properties can be inferred from unresolved photometry alone under various assumptions for the physical properties of dust grains, there is a degeneracy between disc radius and dust temperature that depends on the grain size distribution and optical properties. By resolving the disc we can measure the actual location of the dust. The launch of Herschel, with an angular resolution superior to previous far-infrared telescopes, allows us to spatially resolve more discs and locate the dust directly. Here we present the nine resolved discs around A stars between 20 and 40 pc observed by the DEBRIS survey. We use these data to investigate the disc radii by fitting narrow ring models to images at 70, 100 and 160 {\mu}m and by fitting blackbodies to full spectral energy distributions. We do this with the aim of finding an improved way of estimating disc radii for unresolved systems. The ratio between the resolved and blackbody radii varies between 1 and 2.5. This ratio is inversely correlated with luminosity and any remaining discrepancies are most likely explained by differences to the minimum size of grain in the size distribution or differences in composition. We find that three of the systems are well fit by a narrow ring, two systems are borderline cases and the other four likely require wider or multiple rings to fully explain the observations, reflecting the diversity of planetary systems., Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS
- Published
- 2013
- Full Text
- View/download PDF