Coronagraphic Polarimetry of Circumstellar Disks Around Herbig Ae/Be Stars: Investigating Disk Properties and Dust Grain Growth with HST NICMOS

Details Coronagraphic Polarimetry of Circumstellar Disks Around Herbig Ae/Be Stars: Investigating Disk Properties and Dust Grain Growth with HST NICMOS Coronagraphic Polarimetry of Circumstellar Disks Around Herbig Ae/Be Stars: Investigating Disk Properties and Dust Grain Growth with HST NICMOS

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21340903p&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #409.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.208

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

The process of planet formation within circumstellar disks around young stars is intimately linked to the processes through which primordial sub-micron dust grains collide and accrete, growing to larger particles and ultimately planetesimals. Coronagraphic imaging of resolved circumstellar disks allows us to investigate such grain growth by placing observational constraints on dust particles' scattering properties, size distribution, and spatial arrangement within disks. In this context, imaging polarimetry is a key tool for breaking observational degeneracies between different possible dust distributions, thereby greatly tightening the constraints achievable through numerical radiative transfer modeling. Using the unique capabilities of HST NICMOS, we have obtained 2 micron coronagraphic polarimetry and 1 micron coronagraphic imaging of several Herbig Ae stars. These data reveal distinctly different dust scattering properties around different sources, largely consistent with grain growth to larger sizes around older sources. We present our coronagraphic images of these disks, compare them with previous high-contrast imaging at other wavelengths, and summarize our ongoing analysis and modeling efforts.
Support for this work was provided by NASA through grant number GO-11155 from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Incorporated under NASA contract NAS5-26555, and also by the NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship Program under grant AST-0702933.

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