The peculiar debris disk of HD 111520 as resolved by the Gemini Planet Imager
- Univ. of Victoria, Victoria, BC (Canada); National Research Council of Canada, Victoria, BC (Canada)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. Grenoble Alpes/CNRS, Grenoble (France)
- Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, ON (Canada)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Subaru Telescope, Hilo, HI (United States)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD (United States)
- Univ. de Montreal, Montreal, QC (Canada)
- Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
- Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD (United States); Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States)
- European Southern Observatory, Santiago (Chile)
- Univ. of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
- Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, Tucson, AZ (United States)
- SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA (United States)
- Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States); SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA (United States)
- American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY (United States)
- California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
- Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
Using the Gemini Planet Imager, we have resolved the circumstellar debris disk around HD 111520 at a projected range of ~30–100 AU in both total and polarized H-band intensity. The disk is seen edge-on at a position angle of 165° along the spine of emission. A slight inclination and asymmetric warp are covariant and alter the interpretation of the observed disk emission. We employ three point-spread function subtraction methods to reduce the stellar glare and instrumental artifacts to confirm that there is a roughly 2:1 brightness asymmetry between the NW and SE extension. This specific feature makes HD 111520 the most extreme example of asymmetric debris disks observed in scattered light among similar highly inclined systems, such as HD 15115 and HD 106906. We further identify a tentative localized brightness enhancement and scale height enhancement associated with the disk at ~40 AU away from the star on the SE extension. We also find that the fractional polarization rises from 10% to 40% from 0".5 to 0".8 from the star. Lastly, the combination of large brightness asymmetry and symmetric polarization fraction leads us to believe that an azimuthal dust density variation is causing the observed asymmetry.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada; National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-07NA27344; AST-0909188; AST-1313718; AST-141378; AST-1411868; NNX15AD95G/NEXSS; NNX14AJ80G; NNX11AD21G
- OSTI ID:
- 1352120
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-JRNL-717838
- Journal Information:
- The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 826, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357
- Publisher:
- Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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