Submillimetre images of dusty debris around nearby stars

Wayne S. Holland (), Jane S. Greaves, B. Zuckerman, R. A. Webb, Chris McCarthy, Iain M. Coulson, D. M. Walther, William R. F. Dent, Walter K. Gear and Ian Robson
Additional contact information
Wayne S. Holland: Joint Astronomy Centre
Jane S. Greaves: Joint Astronomy Centre
B. Zuckerman: University of California, Los Angles
R. A. Webb: University of California, Los Angles
Chris McCarthy: University of California, Los Angles
Iain M. Coulson: Joint Astronomy Centre
D. M. Walther: Gemini 8m Telescopes Project
William R. F. Dent: Royal Observatory
Walter K. Gear: Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Holmbury St Mary
Ian Robson: Joint Astronomy Centre

Nature, 1998, vol. 392, issue 6678, 788-791

Abstract: Abstract Indirect detections of massive — presumably Jupiter-like — planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars have recently been reported1,2. Rocky, Earth-like planets are much more difficult to detect, but clues to their possible existence can nevertheless be obtained from observations of the circumstellar debris disks of dust from which they form. The presence of such disks has been inferred3 from excess far-infrared emission but, with the exception of β Pictoris4, it has proved difficult to image these structures directly as starlight dominates the faint light scattered by the dust5. A more promising approach is to attempt to image the thermal emission from the dust grains at submillimetre wavelengths6,7. Here we present images of such emission around Fomalhaut, β Pictoris and Vega. For each star, dust emission is detected from regions comparable in size to the Sun's Kuiper belt of comets. The total dust mass surrounding each star is only a few lunar masses, so any Earth-like planets present must already have formed. The presence of the central cavity, approximately the size of Neptune's orbit, that we detect in the emission from Fomalhaut may indeed be the signature of such planets.

Date: 1998
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DOI: 10.1038/33874

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