English

The Disk Around CoKu Tau/4: Circumbinary, not Transitional

Astrophysics 2009-11-13 v2

Abstract

CoKu Tau/4 has been labeled as one of the very few known transition disk objects: disks around young stars that have their inner disks cleared of dust, arguably due to planetary formation. We report aperture-masking interferometry and adaptive optics imaging observations showing that CoKu Tau/4 is in fact a near-equal binary star of projected separation \sim53 mas (\sim8 AU). The spectral energy distribution of the disk is then naturally explained by inner truncation of the disk through gravitational interactions with the binary star system. We discuss the possibility that such ``unseen'' binary companions could cause other circumbinary disks to be labeled as transitional.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0803.2044,
  title  = {The Disk Around CoKu Tau/4: Circumbinary, not Transitional},
  author = {M. J. Ireland and A. L. Kraus},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0803.2044},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for ApJL

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:21:23.534Z