Revisiting the Search for Extrasolar Oort Clouds

Details Revisiting the Search for Extrasolar Oort Clouds Revisiting the Search for Extrasolar Oort Clouds

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21560106b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #601.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.1120

Statistics

Methodology

Scientific paper

We have searched archival IRAS sky survey data for extrasolar Oort Clouds. Our planetary system's Oort Cloud is inferred from the orbits of comets, and thought to consist of perhaps trillions of cometary bodies distributed from roughly 3000 AU to 50,000 AU from the Sun. After their formation in the planetary region, these objects were scattered to those great distances by the Jovian planets. By analogy to the formation of our own planetary system, other systems may have comparable extended populations, and for stars in the solar neighborhood these structures would have an angular extent of a few degrees. The IRAS 60 and 100 micron wavelength bands are well suited to the peak of the thermal emission from dust generated in these structures and their roughly spherical symmetry can be used to identify them above the background. We follow the methodology used by Stern et al. (1991, Icarus, 91, 65-75) to extract radial brightness profiles around select stars out to distances of roughly 100,000 AU from them. That original study targeted 17 systems, and was conducted before the advent of the detections of extrasolar planets. As the formation of planets may involve the scattering of objects into an Oort Cloud, we extend that study to include all currently known systems with planetary objects within 50 pc of the Sun and thus would have spatially resolved Oort Clouds at the IRAS resolution. Additionally we include all F and G dwarf stars within the same radius. The expected flux from the dust in these clouds make them challenging targets given the sensitivity in these IRAS bands. We find no clear signature of extended structure around these stars on the expected size scales, and instead set upper limits in cases where background emission is minimal.

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