SETI public: Towards Planetesimals in the Disk around TW Hya: 3.5 centimeter Dust Emission

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Paper: astro-ph/0506644
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:59:47 GMT (24kb)

Title: Towards Planetesimals in the Disk around TW Hya: 3.5 centimeter Dust
Emission

Authors: D.J. Wilner (1), P. D'Alessio (2), N. Calvet (1), M. J. Claussen
(3),
L. Hartmann (1) ((1) CfA, (2) UNAM, (3) NRAO)
Comments: 13 pages, 3 figures
Journal-ref: ApJ, 2005, 626, L109
\\
We present Very Large Array observations at 3.5 cm of the nearby young star
TW Hya that show the emission is constant in time over weeks, months and
years,
and spatially resolved with peak brightness temperature ~10 K at ~0.25 (15
AU)
resolution. These features are naturally explained if the emission mechanism
at
this wavelength is thermal emission from dust particles in the disk
surrounding
the star. To account quantitatively for the observations, we construct a
self-consistent accretion disk model that incorporates a population of
centimeter size particles that matches the long wavelength spectrum and
spatial
distribution. A substantial mass fraction of orbiting particles in the TW
Hya
disk must have agglomerated to centimeter size. These data provide the first
clear indication that dust emission from protoplanetary disks may be
observed
at centimeter wavelengths, and that changes in the spectral slope of the
dust
emission may be detected, providing constraints on dust evolution and the
planet formation process.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0506644 , 24kb)

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: Using Fuzzy Logic for Automatic Analysis of Astronomical Pipelines"

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