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Future direct observations of extrasolar Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone could be hampered by a worrisome source of noise, starlight-reflecting exozodiacal dust. Mid-infrared surveys are currently underway to constrain the amount of exozodiacal dust in the habitable zones around nearby stars. However, at visible wavelengths another source of dust, invisible to these surveys, may dominate over exozodiacal dust. For systems observed near edge-on, a cloud of dust with face-on optical depth 10^-7 beyond ~5 AU can mimic the surface brightness of a cloud of exozodiacal dust with equal optical depth if the dust grains are sufficiently forward-scattering. We posit that dust migrating inward from cold debris belts via Poynting-Robertson drag could produce this pseudo-zodiacal effect, potentially making it ~50% as common as exozodiacal clouds. We place constraints on the disk radii and scattering phase function required to produce the effect.
We assume a scenario in which transition discs (i.e. discs around young stars that have signatures of cool dust but lack significant near infra-red emission from warm dust) are associated with the presence of planets (or brown dwarfs). These are assu
The high occurrence rates of spiral arms and large central clearings in protoplanetary disks, if interpreted as signposts of giant planets, indicate that gas giants form commonly as companions to young stars ($<$ few Myr) at orbital separations of 10
Despite the revolution in our knowledge resulting from the detection of planets around mature stars, we know almost nothing about planets orbiting young stars because rapid rotation and active photospheres preclude detection by radial velocities or t
Multi-epoch infrared photometry from Spitzer is used to monitor circumstellar discs at white dwarfs, which are consistent with disrupted minor planets whose debris is accreted and chemically reflected by their host stars. Widespread infrared variabil
In a previous study, we analysed the spectra of 230 cool ($T_mathrm{eff}$ < 9000 K) white dwarfs exhibiting strong metal contamination, measuring abundances for Ca, Mg, Fe and in some cases Na, Cr, Ti, or Ni. Here we interpret these abundances in ter