by Erika Nesvold | May 30, 2013 | Daily Paper Summaries
There’s a lot going on in the HD 142527 protoplanetary disk — accretion, gap opening, and a horseshoe-shaped dust ring. The authors of this paper used ALMA to take a closer look at the gas and dust in this busy disk.
by Nick Ballering | May 21, 2013 | Daily Paper Summaries
The disk around 49 Ceti is known to show characteristics of both protoplanetary and debris disks. New observations with Herschel reveal that it is likely a debris disk with gas generated by evaporating comets.
by Nick Ballering | Mar 25, 2013 | Daily Paper Summaries
Spectroscopy with Herschel can probe the dust in the heart of protoplanetary disks through the 69 micron feature of forsterite. Examining these features in detail reveals that the dust grains are small, iron poor, and confined to narrow rings.
by Sukrit Ranjan | Oct 17, 2012 | Daily Paper Summaries
This paper looks at the role a young star’s environment plays in forming planets around it.
by Adele Plunkett | Oct 12, 2012 | Daily Paper Summaries
A team of astronomers and geologists have teamed up to study the composition of a rocky super-Earth which likely contains a layer of carbon in the form of diamond and graphite.
by Justin Vasel | Sep 17, 2012 | Daily Paper Summaries
Paper Title: Disruption of a Proto-Planetary Disk by the Black Hole at the Milky Way Centre Authors: Murray-Clay, R. A. and Loeb, A. Institution: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)If our solar system lives in suburbia, the center of our galaxy is a sprawling metropolis shining bright for all to see. The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is a crowded, bustling and hectic place. Stars race around like cars on a freeway. Densely-packed hot stars and supernova explosions flood the region with deadly radiation. The supermassive black hole at the center destroys anything that dares to wander too close and test its strength. The galactic center is different than what we’re used to. It’s exciting. It’s dangerous. It’s the kind of place that’s fun to visit, but you wouldn’t want to raise your kids there. The traditional wisdom among astronomers is that stars feel the same way; There is just too much excitement going on in the galactic center for planets to form around stars…Or is there?Last year, a team of astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile discovered a cloud of gas falling towards the black hole at the center, Sagittarius-A* (SgrA*). The team hypothesized that the gas cloud was the result of a collision between two gas clouds streaming from nearby stars. New research from the CfA proposes the seemingly-unlikely explanation the gas cloud is a proto-planetary disk surrounding a star that is too faint to see. A proto-planetary disk is a cloud of gas and dust that orbits a star for millions of years while it slowly coalesces into planets and asteroids and comets; It is where...
