Related papers: A Search for Exozodiacal Clouds with Kepler
We have begun an observational program to search nearby stars for dust disks that are analogous to the disk of zodiacal dust that fills the interior of our solar system. We imaged six nearby main-sequence stars with the Keck telescope at…
Constraining the distribution of gas and dust in the inner 20 au of protoplanetary disks is difficult. At the same time, this region is thought to be responsible for most planet formation, especially around the water ice line at 3-10 au.…
Theoretical formation models and exoplanet detection surveys indicate that systems with multiple giant planets are common. We investigate how multiple super-thermal mass planets embedded in a circumstellar disk shape the dust distribution…
The Kepler light curves used to detect thousands of planetary candidates are susceptible to dilution due to blending with previously unknown nearby stars. With the automated laser adaptive optics instrument, Robo-AO, we have observed 620…
The compact multi-transiting systems discovered by Kepler challenge traditional planet formation theories. These fall into two broad classes: (1) formation further out followed by migration; (2) formation in situ from a disk of gas and…
Circumstellar debris disks are the extrasolar analogues of the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. They consist of comets and leftover planetesimals that continuously collide and produce circumstellar dust that can be observed as infrared…
Many debris disks seen in scattered light have shapes that imply their dust grains trace highly eccentric, apsidally aligned orbits. Apsidal alignment is surprising, especially for dust. Even when born from an apse-aligned ring of parent…
We present new visible and infrared observations of the hot Jupiter Kepler-7b to determine its atmospheric properties. Our analysis allows us to 1) refine Kepler-7b's relatively large geometric albedo of Ag=0.35+-0.02, 2) place upper limits…
This paper considers the distribution of dust which originates in the break-up of planetesimals that are trapped in resonance with a planet. There are three grain populations with different spatial distributions: (I) large grains have the…
A highly misaligned gas disk around one component of a binary star system can undergo global Kozai-Lidov (KL) oscillations for which the disk inclination and eccentricity are exchanged. With hydrodynamical simulations of a gas and dust disk…
Dust determines the temperature structure of protoplanetary disks. However, dust temperature determinations almost invariably rely on a complex modeling of the Spectral Energy Distribution. We attempt a direct determination of the…
A key challenge for protoplanetary disks and planet formation models is to be able to make a reliable connection between observed structures in the disks emission, like bright and dark rings or asymmetries, and the supposed existence of…
We discuss the properties of several circumstellar debris disk systems imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer in a survey of young stars with known far-IR excesses. These dusty disks…
Isotopic properties of meteorites provide evidence that multiple dust trap or pressure bumps had to form and persist in the inner Solar System on a timescale of millions of years. The formation of a pressure bump at the outer edge of the…
High levels of exozodiacal dust are observed around a growing number of main sequence stars. The origin of such dust is not clear, given that it has a short lifetime against both collisions and radiative forces. Even a collisional cascade…
With the number of confirmed rocky exoplanets increasing steadily, their characterisation and the search for exoplanetary biospheres is becoming an increasingly urgent issue in astrobiology. We aim to investigate the possibility of…
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…
Main sequence stars are commonly surrounded by debris disks, composed of cold dust continuously replenished by a reservoir of undetected dust-producing planetesimals. In a planetary system with a belt of planetesimals (like the Solar…
Exozodiacal dust is warm or hot dust found in the inner regions of planetary systems orbiting main sequence stars, in or around their habitable zones. The dust can be the most luminous component of extrasolar planetary systems, but…
Recent observations by the {\it Kepler} space telescope have led to the discovery of more than 4000 exoplanet candidates consisting of many systems with Earth- to Neptune-sized objects that reside well inside the orbit of Mercury, around…