NEW DEBRIS DISK CANDIDATES AROUND 49 NEARBY STARS
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff AZ 86011 (United States)
- SETI Institute, 515 N. Whisman Road, Mountain View, CA 94043 (United States)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (United States)
- Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
- Spitzer Science Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)/SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043 (United States)
We present 49 new candidate debris disks that were detected around nearby stars with the Spitzer Space Telescope using the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) at 24 {mu}m (MIPS24) and 70 {mu}m (MIPS70). The survey sample was composed of stars within 25 pc of the Sun that were not previously observed by any other MIPS survey. Only stars with V < 9 were selected, corresponding to spectral types earlier than M0. MIPS24 integration times were chosen to detect the stellar photosphere at 10{sigma} levels or better. MIPS70 observations were designed to detect excess infrared emission from any star in the MIPS70 sample with a disk as luminous at that around {epsilon} Eridani. The resulting sample included over 436 nearby stars that were observed with both MIPS24 and MIPS70, plus an additional 198 observed only with MIPS24. Debris disk candidates were defined as targets where excess emission was detected at 3{sigma} levels or greater, and the ratio of observed flux density to expected photosphere emission was three standard deviations or more above the mean value for the sample. The detection rate implied by the resulting 29 MIPS24 candidates is 4.6%. A detection rate of 4.8% is implied by 21 MIPS70 candidates. The distribution of spectral types for stars identified as candidates resembles that of the general sample and yields strong evidence that debris-disk occurrence does not decrease for K dwarfs. Modeling of non-uniform sensitivity in the sample is required to interpret quantitative estimates of the overall detection frequency and will be presented in a future work.
- OSTI ID:
- 21301312
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 710, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/710/1/L26; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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