No Arabic abstract
We obtained polarimetric differential imaging of a gas-rich debris disk around HD 141569A with SPHERE in the H-band to compare the scattering properties of the innermost ring at 44 au with former observations in total intensity with the same instrument. In polarimetric imaging, we observed that the intensity of the ring peaks in the south-east, mostly in the forward direction, whereas in total intensity imaging, the ring is detected only at the south. This noticeable characteristic suggests a non-uniform dust density in the ring. We implemented a density function varying azimuthally along the ring and generated synthetic images both in polarimetry and in total intensity, which are then compared to the actual data. We find that the dust density peaks in the south-west at an azimuthal angle of $220^{circ} sim 238^{circ}$ with a rather broad width of $61^{circ} sim 127^{circ}$. Although there are still uncertainties that remain in the determination of the anisotropic scattering factor, the implementation of an azimuthal density variation to fit the data proved to be robust. Upon elaborating on the origin of this dust density distribution, we conclude that it could be the result of a massive collision when we account for the effect of the high gas mass that is present in the system on the dynamics of grains. Using the outcome of this modelization, we further measured the polarized scattering phase function for the observed scattering angle between 33$^{circ}$ and 147$^{circ}$ as well as the spectral reflectance of the southern part of the ring between 0.98 $mu$m and 2.1 $mu$m. We tentatively derived the grain properties by comparing these quantities with MCFOST models and assuming Mie scattering. Our preliminary interpretation indicates a mixture of porous sub-micron sized astro-silicate and carbonaceous grains.
We report the discovery of a scattering component around the HD 141569 A circumstellar debris system, interior to the previously known inner ring. The discovered inner disk component, obtained in broadband optical light with HST/STIS coronagraphy, was imaged with an inner working angle of 0.25, and can be traced from 0.4 (~46 AU) to 1.0 (~116 AU) after deprojection using i=55deg. The inner disk component is seen to forward scatter in a manner similar to the previously known rings, has a pericenter offset of ~6 AU, and break points where the slope of the surface brightness changes. It also has a spiral arm trailing in the same sense as other spiral arms and arcs seen at larger stellocentric distances. The inner disk spatially overlaps with the previously reported warm gas disk seen in thermal emission. We detect no point sources within 2 (~232 AU), in particular in the gap between the inner disk component and the inner ring. Our upper limit of 9+/-3 M_J is augmented by a new dynamical limit on single planetary mass bodies in the gap between the inner disk component and the inner ring of 1 M_J, which is broadly consistent with previous estimates.
We report here the highest resolution near-IR imaging to date of the HD 141569A disc taken as part of the NICI Science Campaign. We recover 4 main features in the NICI images of the HD 141569 disc discovered in previous HST imaging: 1) an inner ring / spiral feature. Once deprojected, this feature does not appear circular. 2) an outer ring which is considerably brighter on the western side compared to the eastern side, but looks fairly circular in the deprojected image. 3) an additional arc-like feature between the inner and outer ring only evident on the east side. In the deprojected image, this feature appears to complete the circle of the west side inner ring and 4) an evacuated cavity from 175 AU inwards. Compared to the previous HST imaging with relatively large coronagraphic inner working angles (IWA), the NICI coronagraph allows imaging down to an IWA of 0.3. Thus, the inner edge of the inner ring/spiral feature is well resolved and we do not find any additional disc structures within 175 AU. We note some additional asymmetries in this system. Specifically, while the outer ring structure looks circular in this deprojection, the inner bright ring looks rather elliptical. This suggests that a single deprojection angle is not appropriate for this system and that there may be an offset in inclination between the two ring / spiral features. We find an offset of 4+-2 AU between the inner ring and the star center, potentially pointing to unseen inner companions.
We present archival ALMA observations of the HD 141569 circumstellar disk at 345, 230, and 100 GHz. These data detect extended millimeter emission that is exterior to the inner disk. We find through simultaneous visibility modeling of all three data sets that the systems morphology is described well by a two-component disk model. The inner disk ranges from approximately 16 to 45 au with a spectral index of 1.81 (q = 2.95) and the outer disk ranges from 95 to 300 au with a spectral index of 2.28 (q = 3.21). Azimuthally averaged radial emission profiles derived from the continuum images at each frequency show potential emission that is consistent with the visibility modeling. The analysis presented here shows that at ~5 Myr HD 141569s grain size distribution is steeper, and therefore more evolved, in the outer disk than in the inner disk.
HD 106906 is a young, binary stellar system, located in the Lower Centaurus Crux (LCC) group. This system is unique among discovered systems in that it contains an asymmetrical debris disk, as well as an 11 M$_{Jup}$ planet companion, at a separation of $sim$735 AU. Only a handful of other systems are known to contain both a disk and directly imaged planet, where HD 106906 is the only one in which the planet has apparently been scattered. The debris disk is nearly edge on, and extends roughly to $>$500 AU, where previous studies with HST have shown the outer regions to have high asymmetry. To better understand the structure and composition of the disk, we have performed a deep polarimetric study of HD 106906s asymmetrical debris disk using newly obtained $H$-, $J$-, and $K1$-band polarimetric data from the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). An empirical analysis of our data supports a disk that is asymmetrical in surface brightness and structure, where fitting an inclined ring model to the disk spine suggests that the disk may be highly eccentric ($egtrsim0.16$). A comparison of the disk flux with the stellar flux in each band suggests a blue color that also does not significantly vary across the disk. We discuss these results in terms of possible sources of asymmetry, where we find that dynamical interaction with the planet companion, HD 106906b, is a likely candidate.
HD 141569 A is a pre-main sequence B9.5 Ve star surrounded by a prominent and complex circumstellar disk, likely still in a transition stage from protoplanetary to debris disk phase. Here, we present a new image of the third inner disk component of HD 141569 A made in the L band (3.8 micron) during the commissioning of the vector vortex coronagraph recently installed in the near-infrared imager and spectrograph NIRC2 behind the W.M. Keck Observatory Keck II adaptive optics system. We used reference point spread function subtraction, which reveals the innermost disk component from the inner working distance of $simeq 23$ AU and up to $simeq 70$ AU. The spatial scale of our detection roughly corresponds to the optical and near-infrared scattered light, thermal Q, N and 8.6 micron PAH emission reported earlier. We also see an outward progression in dust location from the L-band to the H-band (VLT/SPHERE image) to the visible (HST/STIS image), likely indicative of dust blowout. The warm disk component is nested deep inside the two outer belts imaged by HST NICMOS in 1999 (respectively at 406 and 245 AU). We fit our new L-band image and spectral energy distribution of HD 141569 A with the radiative transfer code MCFOST. Our best-fit models favor pure olivine grains, and are consistent with the composition of the outer belts. While our image shows a putative very-faint point-like clump or source embedded in the inner disk, we did not detect any true companion within the gap between the inner disk and the first outer ring, at a sensitivity of a few Jupiter masses.