An 11.6 Micron Keck Search for Exo-Zodiacal Dust
Abstract
We have begun an observational program to search nearby stars for dust disks that are analogous to the disk of zodiacal dust that fills the interior of our solar system. We imaged six nearby main-sequence stars with the Keck telescope at 11.6 mum, correcting for atmosphere-induced wavefront aberrations and deconvolving the point spread function via classical speckle analysis. We compare our data to a simple model of the solar zodiacal dust based on COBE/DIRBE observations and place upper limits on the concentration of exo-zodiacal dust around these stars.
- Publication:
-
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
- Pub Date:
- November 1998
- DOI:
- 10.1086/316267
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0002040
- Bibcode:
- 1998PASP..110.1336K
- Keywords:
-
- STARS: CIRCUMSTELLAR MATTER;
- INFRARED RADIATION;
- INTERPLANETARY MEDIUM;
- STARS: PLANETARY SYSTEMS;
- TECHNIQUES: IMAGE PROCESSING;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 10 pages, figure1, figure2, figure3, and figures 4a-e