Physics
Scientific paper
Jul 2004
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004hst..prop10177s&link_type=abstract
HST Proposal ID #10177
Physics
Hst Proposal Id #10177 Ism
Scientific paper
Until recently, despite decades of concerted effort applied to understanding the formation processes that gave birth to our solar system, the detailed morphology of circumstellar material that must eventually form planets has been virtually impossible to discern. The advent of high contrast, coronagraphic imaging as implemented with the instruments aboard HST has dramatically enhanced our understanding of natal planetary system formation. Even so, only a handful of evolved disks { 1 Myr and older} have been imaged and spatially resolved in light scattered from their constituent grains. To elucidate the physical processes and properties in potentially planet-forming circumstellar disks, and to understand the nature and evolution of their grains, a larger spatially resolved and photometrically reliable sample of such systems must be observed. Thus, we propose a highly sensitive circumstellar disk imaging survey of a well-defined and carefully selected sample of YSOs {1-10 Myr T Tau and HAeBe stars} and {> app 10 Myr} main sequence stars, to probe the posited epoch of planetary system formation, and to provide this critically needed imagery. Our resolved images will shed light on the spatial distributions of the dust in these thermally emissive disks. In combination with their long wavelength SEDs the physical properties of the grains will be discerned, or constrained by our photometrically accurate surface brightness sensitivity limits for faint disks which elude detection. Our sample builds on the success of the exploratory GTO 7233 program, using two-roll per orbit PSF-subtracted NICMOS coronagraphy to provide the highest detection sensitivity to the smallest disks around bright stars which can be imaged with HST. Our sample will discriminate between proposed evolutionary scenarios while providing a legacy of cataloged morphologies for interpreting mid- and far-IR SEDs that the recently launched Spitzer Space Telescope will deliver. This project cannot be done from the ground, and becomes untenable for HST after Cycle 13 under the anticipated use of two-gyro pointing control mode.
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