Related papers: Post-Main Sequence Evolution of Debris Discs

Recent advances in astronomical instrumentation mean that we are now able to image the thermal emission from the disks of dust around main sequence stars that may be the fossil remnants of planetary formation. These observations imply that…

Extreme debris discs (EDDs) are bright and warm circumstellar dusty structures around main sequence stars. They may represent the outcome of giant collisions occuring in the terrestrial region between large planetesimals or planetary…

Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…

The accretion of comets onto DA white dwarfs can produce observable metal absorption lines. We show here that comet systems around the progenitor main sequence star are vulnerable to being lost during asymptotic giant branch mass loss, if…

We have used the velocity dispersion as an age indicator to constrain the ages of a large sample of main sequence Vega-like stars in order to study the lifetimes and temporal evolution of the dust disks around them. We use HIPPARCOS…

Dust in debris disks is generated by collisions among planetesimals. The existence of these planetesimals is a consequence of the planet formation process, but the relationship between debris disks and planets has not been clearly…

Most stars are born in the crowded environments of gradually forming star clusters. Dynamical interactions between close-passing stars and the evolving UV radiation fields from proximate massive stars are expected to sculpt the…

We study the orbital evolution of wide binary stars in the solar neighborhood due to gravitational perturbations from passing stars. We include the effects of the Galactic tidal field and continue to follow the stars after they become…

Massive stars play a major role in the evolution of their host galaxies, and serve as important probes of the distant Universe. It has been established that the majority of massive stars reside in close binaries and will interact with their…

Cool debris discs are a relic of the planetesimal formation process around their host star, analogous to the solar system's Edgeworth-Kuiper belt. As such, they can be used as a proxy to probe the origin and formation of planetary systems…

Observational and theoretical evidence that internal, slow ("secular") evolution reshapes galaxy disks is reviewed in Kormendy & Kennicutt (2004, ARAA, 42, 603). This update has three aims. First, I emphasize that this evolution is very…

We aim to see whether debris belts evolving in between two stars may be impacted by the presence of the companion and whether this leaves any detectable signature that could be observed with current or future instruments. We consider a…

Based on a large number of observations carried out in the last decade it appears that the fraction of stars with protoplanetary disks declines steadily between ~1 Myr and ~10 Myr. We do, however, know that the multiplicity fraction of…

Observational advances over the last decade have enabled high-resolution, interferometric studies of forming multiple systems, statistical surveys of multiplicity in star-forming regions, and new insights into disk evolution and planetary…

Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…

In multiple stellar systems interactions among the companion stars and their discs affect planet formation. In the circumstellar case tidal truncation makes protoplanetary discs smaller, fainter and less long-lived than those evolving in…

The Galactic disk retains a vast amount of information about how it came to be, and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the…

Optically thin dusty disks around Main Sequence stars consist of debris from catastrophic collisions or from low erosion of long-lived planetesimals. Resolved observations of dusty disks have systematically evidenced asymmetries and annular…

We have conducted a study of debris disks around F stars in order to explore correlations between rotation, stellar winds, and circumstellar disks. We obtained new 24 micron photometry from Spitzer's Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer…

We explore the collisional decay of disk mass and infrared emission in debris disks. With models, we show that the rate of the decay varies throughout the evolution of the disks, increasing its rate up to a certain point, which is followed…