NICMOS Coronagraphic Imaging of a Circumstellar Disk around the T Tauri Star GM Aurigae

Details NICMOS Coronagraphic Imaging of a Circumstellar Disk around the T Tauri Star GM Aurigae NICMOS Coronagraphic Imaging of a Circumstellar Disk around the T Tauri Star GM Aurigae

Dec 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998aas...193.7314k&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 193rd AAS Meeting, #73.14; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30, p.1363

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

We have carried out a coronagraphic imaging study of circumstellar disk candidates as part of NICMOS IDT investigations of the environments of nearby stars. Here we present images of circumstellar nebulosity around the classical T Tauri star, GM Aurigae, at lambda = 1.1 and 1.6 mu m. The emission extends beyond 2.8'' (450 AU) from the star with brightness falling off radially as R(-2.5) . The flux ratio between the two wavelengths differs little from that expected for a K5 star like GM Aur, suggesting that scattering grains include a substantial population with sizes larger than 1 mu m. Preliminary modeling of the emission confirms its origin in stellar light reflected off the surface of a flared circumstellar disk and indicates an inclination 60(deg) from face on. These results agree well with the appearance of CO(2->1) emission in aperture synthesis images from the Owens Valley Millimeter Array, and with the morphology of optical nebulosity in psf-subtracted exposures taken by the WFPC2 science team. Further, the high-resolution constraint on size and orientation enables a definitive interpretation of the velocity structure from kinematic modeling of CO(2->1) images at lower resolution: it is demonstrated unequivocally that the gas is centrifugally supported and in Keplerian rotation within the confines of a disk centered on the star. This work is supported by NASA grant NAG 5-3042, and based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

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