Related papers: Evidence for Misalignment Between Debris Disks and…
Debris disks are believed to be related to planetesimals left over around stars after planet formation has ceased. The frequency of debris disks around M-dwarfs which account for 70% of the stars in the Galaxy is unknown while constrains…
The angle between the rotation and orbital axes of stars in binary systems -- the obliquity -- is an important indicator of how these systems form and evolve but few such measurements exist. We combine the sample of astrometric orbital…
Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope Legacy Science Program ``Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems'' (FEPS), we have searched for debris disks around 9 FGK stars (2-10 Gyr), known from radial velocity (RV) studies to have one…
Debris discs consist of belts of bodies ranging in size from dust grains to planetesimals; these belts are visible markers of planetary systems around other stars that can reveal the influence of extrasolar planets through their shape and…
Although photometric and spectroscopic surveys with the Spitzer Space Telescope increased remarkably the number of well studied debris disks around A-type and Sun-like stars, detailed analyzes of debris disks around F-type stars remained…
The accretion of material from protoplanetary disks onto their central stars is a fundamental process in the evolution of these systems and a key diagnostic in constraining the disk lifetime. We analyze the relationship between the stellar…
The majority of debris discs discovered so far have only been detected through infrared excess emission above stellar photospheres. While disc properties can be inferred from unresolved photometry alone under various assumptions for the…
We present evidence for scale-independent misalignment of interstellar dust filaments and magnetic fields. We estimate the misalignment by comparing millimeter-wave dust-polarization measurements from Planck with filamentary structures…
OB stars exhibit various types of spectral variability associated with wind structures, including the apparently ubiquitous discrete absorption components (DACs). These are proposed to be caused by either magnetic fields or non-radial…
The angle $\psi$ between a planet's orbital axis and the spin axis of its parent star is an important diagnostic of planet formation, migration, and tidal evolution. We seek empirical constraints on $\psi$ by measuring the stellar…
The space velocities and Galactic orbital elements of stars calculated from the currently available high-accuracy observations in our summary catalog of spectroscopic magnesium abundances in dwarfs and subgiants in the solar neighborhood…
The Sun's equator and the planets' orbital planes are nearly aligned, which is presumably a consequence of their formation from a single spinning gaseous disk. For exoplanetary systems this well-aligned configuration is not guaranteed:…
A significant fraction of massive main-sequence stars show strong, large-scale magnetic fields. The origin of these fields, their lifetimes, and their role in shaping the characteristics and evolution of massive stars are currently not well…
Stellar obliquity, the angle between a planet's orbital axis and its host star's spin axis, traces the formation and evolution of a planetary system. In transiting exoplanet observations, only the sky-projected stellar obliquity can be…
We conducted a survey for infrared excess emission from 16 nearby main sequence shell stars using the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Shell stars are early-type stars with narrow absorption…
Stars with planets at intermediate metallicities ([-0.7,-0.2] dex) exhibit properties that differ from the general field stars. Thirteen stars with planets reported in this metallicity range belong to the thick disc, while only one planet…
The majority of stars in known star-forming regions are located in binary systems. Although the separation distribution of these populations varies from one region to another, most peak between a few and several tens of AU. Given the >100…
We investigate how a protoplanetary disc's susceptibility to gravitational instabilities and fragmentation depends on the mass of its host star. We use 1D disc models in conjunction with 3D SPH simulations to determine the critical…
Disks of bodies orbiting a much more massive central object are extremely common in astrophysics. When the orbits comprising such disks are eccentric, we show they are susceptible to a new dynamical instability. Gravitational forces between…
Circumstellar disks are an essential ingredient of the formation of low-mass stars. It is unclear, however, whether the accretion-disk paradigm can also account for the formation of stars more massive than about 10 solar masses, in which…