Related papers: Extrasolar Kuiper Belts
The dust disk around Beta Pictoris must be produced by collision or by evaporation of orbiting Kuiper belt-like objects. Here we extend the already proposed Orbiting-Evaporating-Bodies (OEB) scenario in which the disk is a gigantic…
Debris discs are known to exist around many planet-host stars, but no debris dust has been found so far in systems with transiting planets. Using publicly available catalogues, we searched for infrared excesses in such systems. In the…
A debris disk is a constituent of any planetary system surrounding a main sequence star. We study whether close stellar encounters can disrupt and strip a debris disk of its planetesimals in the expanding open cluster of its birth with a…
Dust measurements in the outer solar system are reviewed. Only the plasma wave instrument on board Voyagers 1 and 2 recorded impacts in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt (EKB). Pioneers 10 and 11 measured a constant dust flux of 10-micron-sized…
Planets are born from disks of gas and dust, and observations of protoplanetary disks are used to constrain the initial conditions of planet formation. However, dust mass measurements of Class II disks with ALMA have called into question…
The recent detections of extrasolar giant planets has revealed a surprising diversity of planetary system architectures, with many very unlike our Solar System. Understanding the origin of this diversity requires multi-wavelength studies of…
While most debris disks consist of dust with little or no gas, a fraction has significant amounts of gas detected via emission lines of CO, ionized carbon, and/or atomic oxygen. Almost all such gaseous debris disks known are around A-type…
(ABRIDGED) Studies of debris disks have shown that most systems are analogous to the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. However a rare subset of sun-like stars possess dust which lies in the terrestrial planet region. In this study we aim to determine…
The mass of solids in a young circumstellar disc may be the key factor in its efficiency in building planetesimals and planetary cores, and dust observed around young T Tauri and Herbig Ae stars can be used as a proxy for this initial solid…
Fomalhaut is a young, nearby star that is suspected to harbor an infant planetary system, interspersed with one or more belts of dusty debris. We present far-infrared images obtained with the Herschel Space Observatory with an angular…
Using ISO-ISOPHOT we carried out a survey of almost 150 stars to search for evidence of emission from dust orbiting young main sequence stars, both in clusters and isolated systems. Over half of the detections are new examples of dusty…
We reconsider the commonly held assumption that warm debris disks are tracers of terrestrial planet formation. The high occurrence rate inferred for Earth-mass planets around mature solar-type stars based on exoplanet surveys (roughly 20%)…
Dust in debris disks is produced by colliding or evaporating planetesimals, remnants of the planet formation process. Warm dust disks, known by their emission at < 24 micron, are rare (4% of FGK main sequence stars) and especially…
Dusty debris disks around main-sequence stars are signposts for the existence of planetesimals and exoplanets. From cross-correlating \hip stars with the \iras catalogs, we identify 146 stars within 120 pc of Earth that show excess emission…
As part of a large Spitzer/MIPS GTO program, we have searched for infrared excesses due to debris disks toward 26 FGK field stars known from radial velocity (RV) studies to have one or more planets. While none of these stars show excesses…
Around 16% of the solar-like stars in our neighbourhood show IR-excesses due to debris discs and a fraction of them are known to host planets. We aim to determine in a homogeneous way the metallicity of a sample of stars with known debris…
Recent observations indicate that >99% of the small bodies in the Solar System reside in its outer reaches --- in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Kuiper Belt bodies are probably the best preserved representatives of the icy planetesimals…
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…
Most stars form in dense stellar environments, where frequent close encounters can strongly perturb and reshape the early architecture of planetary systems. The solar system, with its rich population of distant comets, provides a natural…
We present Spitzer photometric (IRAC and MIPS) and spectroscopic (IRS low resolution) observations for 314 stars in the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems (FEPS) Legacy program. These data are used to investigate the properties…