English

HD 101088, An Accreting 14 AU Binary in Lower Centaurus Crux With Very Little Circumstellar Dust

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-05-18 v1

Abstract

We present high resolution (R=55,000) optical spectra obtained with MIKE on the 6.5 m Magellan Clay Telescope as well as Spitzer MIPS photometry and IRS low resolution (R~60) spectroscopy of the close (14 AU separation) binary, HD 101088, a member of the ~12 Myr old southern region of the Lower Centaurus Crux (LCC) subgroup of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association. We find that the primary and/or secondary is accreting from a tenuous circumprimary and/or circumsecondary disk despite the apparent lack of a massive circumbinary disk. We estimate a lower limit to the accretion rate of > 1x10^-9 solar masses per year, which our multiple observation epochs show varies over a timescale of months. The upper limit on the 70 micron flux allows us to place an upper limit on the mass of dust grains smaller than several microns present in a circumbinary disk of 0.16 moon masses. We conclude that the classification of disks into either protoplanetary or debris disks based on fractional infrared luminosity alone may be misleading.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1004.4000,
  title  = {HD 101088, An Accreting 14 AU Binary in Lower Centaurus Crux With Very Little Circumstellar Dust},
  author = {Martin A. Bitner and Christine H. Chen and James Muzerolle and Alycia J. Weinberger and Mark Pecaut and Eric E. Mamajek and Melissa K. Mclure},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1004.4000},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

8 pages, 2 figures, ApJ accepted