Characterizing the Debris Disk around HD 170773 with Resolved Millimeter Observations
Abstract
Debris disks are extra-solar analogs to our own Kuiper belt and found around at least 17% of nearby sun-like stars. The morphology and dynamics of a disk encode information about its history, as well as that of any exoplanets within the system. We used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) to obtain 1.3 mm observations of the debris disk around the nearby F5V star HD 170773 as part of the REASONS (REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars) Survey. We image the face-on ring and accurately determine its fundamental parameters, such as its radius and width, using a forward-modeling Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach. We find the belt to lie at much larger distances from the star compared to most belts around other late A / early F type stars. This makes HD 170773 part of a small group of 4 potential outliers, 2 of which host directly imaged giant planets, which may point to a connection between large belts and the presence of long-period giant planets. The SAO REU program is funded in part by the National Science Foundation REU and Department of Defense ASSURE programs under NSF Grant no. AST-1659473, and by the Smithsonian Institution.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #233
- Pub Date:
- January 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AAS...23316301S