Co-author: R. Smith

Co-authors' Institutions: University of Edinburgh

Abstract:

Images of debris disks are extremely valuable since they give a direct indication of the radial location of the planetesimal belt feeding the dust and structures within the disks can be used to infer the presence of unseen planets or to identify the products of cataclysmic planetesimal collisions. This poster considers the resolvability of A star debris disks in the mid-IR using Gemini. A sample of 46 A star debris disks detected by Spitzer or IRAS at both 24 and 70um is constructed and the radii and luminosities of those disks are estimated. The predicted disk flux at 18 and 25um as a function of angular size is compared with model predictions for the performance of TReCS/Michelle identifying several disks that are potentially resolvable at those wavelengths. Since the derived properties of the disks in this sample are consistent with a model in which all A star disks are evolving in steady state, we show how new constraints on those properties from imaging can be used to address the issue of whether the dust we see is a permanent or transient feature of these systems.