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Title: CHARACTERIZATION OF THE INNER DISK AROUND HD 141569 A FROM KECK/NIRC2 L-BAND VORTEX CORONAGRAPHY

Journal Article · · Astronomical Journal (Online)
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  1. Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Boulevard, MC 249-17, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
  2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
  3. Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research (STAR) Institute, Université de Liège, 19 Allée du Six Août, B-4000 Liège (Belgium)
  4. W. M. Keck Observatory, 65-1120 Mamalahoa Hwy., Kamuela, HI 96743 (United States)
  5. NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, California Institute of Technology, 770 South Wilson Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
  6. Department of Engineering Sciences, Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University, Box 534, SE-751 21 Uppsala (Sweden)
  7. European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Cordóva 3107, Vitacura, Santiago (Chile)

HD 141569 A is a pre-main sequence B9.5 Ve star surrounded by a prominent and complex circumstellar disk, likely still in a transition stage from protoplanetary to debris disk phase. Here, we present a new image of the third inner disk component of HD 141569 A made in the L ′ band (3.8 μ m) during the commissioning of the vector vortex coronagraph that has recently been installed in the near-infrared imager and spectrograph NIRC2 behind the W.M. Keck Observatory Keck II adaptive optics system. We used reference point-spread function subtraction, which reveals the innermost disk component from the inner working distance of ≃23 au and up to ≃70 au. The spatial scale of our detection roughly corresponds to the optical and near-infrared scattered light, thermal Q , N , and 8.6 μ m PAH emission reported earlier. We also see an outward progression in dust location from the L ′ band to the H band (Very Large Telescope/SPHERE image) to the visible ( Hubble Space Telescope ( HST )/STIS image), which is likely indicative of dust blowout. The warm disk component is nested deep inside the two outer belts imaged by HST-NICMOS in 1999 (at 406 and 245 au, respectively). We fit our new L ′-band image and spectral energy distribution of HD 141569 A with the radiative transfer code MCFOST. Our best-fit models favor pure olivine grains and are consistent with the composition of the outer belts. While our image shows a putative very faint point-like clump or source embedded in the inner disk, we did not detect any true companion within the gap between the inner disk and the first outer ring, at a sensitivity of a few Jupiter masses.

OSTI ID:
22663864
Journal Information:
Astronomical Journal (Online), Vol. 153, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English