Related papers: Observations of Circumstellar Disks
Circumstellar disks play an important role in many stages of the evolution of stars. However, it is only possible to directly image circumstellar disks for a few of the nearest stars. For massive stars, the situation is even more difficult,…
New images of young stars are revolutionizing our understanding of planet formation. ALMA detects large grains in planet-forming disks with few AU scale resolution and scattered light imaging with extreme adaptive optics systems reveal…
The direct images of giant extrasolar planets recently obtained around several main sequence stars represent a major step in the study of planetary systems. These high-dynamic range images are among the most striking results obtained by the…
Circumstellar disks are the sites of planet formation, and the very high incidence of extrasolar planets implies that most of them actually form planetary systems. Studying the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks can thus place…
Kant and Laplace suggested the Solar System formed from a rotating gaseous disk in the 18th century, but convincing evidence that young stars are indeed surrounded by such disks was not presented for another 200 years. As we move into the…
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…
Circumstellar disks have long been regarded as windows into planetary systems. The advent of high sensitivity, high resolution imaging in the submillimetre where both the solid and gas components of disks can be detected opens up new…
Detailed radial/vertical structure modeling of observations of disks around Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) can provide information on the physical conditions and on the characteristics of the gas and dust in their interiors. We describe…
We calculate simulated images of disks perturbed by embedded small planets. These 10-50 M_Earth bodies represent the growing cores of giant planets. We examine scattered light and thermal emission from these disks over a range of…
Circumstellar disks around young stars are the birthsites of planets. It is thus fundamental to study the disks in which they form, their structure and the physical conditions therein. The first astronomical unit is of great interest…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…
We have completed a systematic survey for disks around young brown dwarfs and very low mass stars. By choosing a well-defined sample and by obtaining sensitive thermal IR observations, we can make an unbiased measurement of the disk…
Flattened, rotating disks of cool dust and gas extending for tens to hundreds of AU are found around almost all low mass stars shortly after their birth. These disks generally persist for several Myr, during which time some material…
The presence of debris disks around young main sequence stars hints at the existence and structure of planetary systems. Millimeter-wavelength observations probe large grains that trace the location of planetesimal belts. The FEPS…
Circumstellar disks are an integral part of the star formation process and the sites where planets are formed. Understanding the physical processes that drive their evolution, as disks evolve from optically thick to optically thin, is…
We present K-band polarimetric images of several massive young stellar objects at resolutions $\sim$ 0.1-0.5 arcsec. The polarization vectors around these sources are nearly centro-symmetric, indicating they are dominating the illumination…
To understand how planetary systems form in the dusty disks around pre-main-sequence stars a detailed knowledge of the structure and evolution of these disks is required. While this is reasonably well understood for the regions of the disk…
(abridged) Thus far our impressions regarding the evolutionary time scales for young circumstellar disks have been based on small number statistics. Over the past decade, however, in addition to precision study of individual star/disk…
We investigate the nature of the innermost regions of seven circumstellar disks around pre-main-sequence stars. Our object sample contains disks apparently at various stages of their evolution. Both single stars and spatially resolved…
Simulations of massive star formation predict the formation of discs with significant substructure, such as spiral arms and clumps due to fragmentation. Here we present a semi-analytic framework for producing synthetic observations of discs…