Related papers: Variability of the Great Disk Shadow in Serpens

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…

We present high cadence, high precision multi-band photometry of the young, M1Ve, debris disk star, AU Microscopii. The data were obtained in three continuum filters spanning a wavelength range from 4500\AA to 6600\AA, plus H$\alpha$, over…

We present new observations of CO J=2-1 emission from the protoplanetary disk around TW Hya. Emission is detected out to 240 au (4") and found to exhibit azimuthal variations up to 20% beyond 180 au (3"), with the west side of the disk…

The luminosity of young giant planets can inform about their formation and accretion history. The directly imaged planets detected so far are consistent with the "hot-start" scenario of high entropy and luminosity. If nebular gas passes…

Protoplanetary disks are dispersed by viscous evolution and photoevaporation in a few million years; in the interim small, sub-micron sized dust grains must grow and form planets. The time-varying abundance of small grains in an evolving…

We present a 3-5um LBT/MMT adaptive optics imaging study of three Upper Scorpius stars with brown dwarf (BD) companions with very low-masses/mass ratios (M_BD < 25M_Jup; M_BD / M_star ~ 1-2%), and wide separations (300-700 AU): GSC 06214,…

Observations performed with high-resolution imaging techniques revealed the existence of shadows in circumstellar disks that can be explained by the misalignment of an inner with respect to an outer disk. The cause of misalignment, however,…

T Cha is a nearby (d = 100 pc) transition disk known to have an optically thin gap separating optically thick inner and outer disk components. Huelamo et al. (2011) recently reported the presence of a low-mass object candidate within the…

Observations from the Herschel Space Observatory have more than doubled the number of wide debris disks orbiting Sunlike stars to include over 30 systems with R > 100 AU. Here we present new Herschel PACS and re-analyzed Spitzer MIPS…

Recent imaging of protoplanetary disks with high resolution and contrast have revealed a striking variety of substructure. Of particular interest are cases where near-infrared scattered light images show evidence for low-intensity annular…

Power spectra (PS) of high-resolution images of M51 (NGC 5194) taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope have been examined for evidence of disk thickness in the form of a change in slope between large scales,…

The evolution of planet-forming disks and the processes of planet formation influence each other, and both of them are possibly impacted by the local environment. Extensive high-resolution imagery of disks across space and time is the best…

We observe a significant change in the TW Hya disk interior to 40~AU via archival unpolarized multi-wavelength Hubble Space Telescope/STIS and NICMOS images with an inner working angle (IWA) of 0\farcs4 (22~AU). Our images show the outer…

We present new 0.6 - 4 $\mu$m imaging of the SR 21 transition disk from Keck/NIRC2 and Magellan/MagAO. The protoplanetary disk around SR 21 has a large (~ 30 - 40 AU) clearing first inferred from its spectral energy distribution and later…

The time-scale over which and modality by which young stellar objects (YSOs) disperse their circumstellar discs dramatically influences the eventual formation and evolution of planetary systems. By means of extensive radiative transfer (RT)…

Gaseous and dust debris disks around white dwarfs (WDs) are formed from tidally disrupted planetary bodies. This offers an opportunity to determine the composition of exoplanetary material by measuring element abundances in the accreting…

Extreme debris discs are characterized by unusually strong mid-infrared excess emission, which often proves to be variable. The warm dust in these discs is of transient nature and is likely related to a recent giant collision occurring…

A clear understanding of the chemical processing of matter, as it is transferred from a molecular cloud to a planetary system, depends heavily on knowledge of the physical conditions endured by gas and dust as these accrete onto a disk and…

Approximately half of all disc galaxies exhibit appreciable warps in both their stellar and HI discs. The typical warp amplitude is small (a few degrees), and only becomes noticeable at the periphery of the galaxy disc. As a result, warps…

In hierarchical structure formation models of disk galaxies, a dark matter disk forms as massive satellites are preferentially dragged into the disk-plane where they dissolve. Here, we quantify the importance of this dark disk for direct…