Debris Disk Science Enabled by a Probe-scale Space Coronagraph Mission

Details Debris Disk Science Enabled by a Probe-scale Space Coronagraph Mission Debris Disk Science Enabled by a Probe-scale Space Coronagraph Mission

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21542821s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #428.21; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.348

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

Debris disks are the signposts of planetary systems: collisions between rocky/icy parent bodies maintain debris dust around main sequence stars against losses to radiation pressure and P-R drag. Debris disk structures show the location of asteroid/Kuiper belts around nearby stars, and reflect dynamical interactions with local extrasolar planets. Only 17 debris disks with high optical depth have been spatially resolved to date in scattered light images made with the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based adaptive optics. Hundreds more with lower optical depth have been identified among nearby stars through far-IR photometry with the Spitzer Space Telescope, and more should follow in the next few years from Herschel. The most capable means for imaging this larger disk population is a next-generation coronagraphic instrument on a 1.5m class optical space telescope. Utilizing high-contrasat imaging simulations validated by laboratory demonstrations on the JPL High Contrast Imaging Testbed, we show that such a mission will be capable of imaging Kuiper disk structures down to the 10 zodi level, and exozodiacal dust down to the 1 zodi level, around a major sample of nearby stars. This performance goes well beyond what is about to be achieved with upcoming extreme adaptive optics systems or the ALMA array, and thus provides the best path for imaging exploration of planetary systems in the solar neighborhood.

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