Molecular gas clumps from the destruction of icy bodies in the β Pictoris debris disk

Dent, W. R. F., Wyatt, M. C., Roberge, A., Augereau, J.- C., Casassus, S., Corder, S., Greaves, J. S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3133-413X, de Gregorio-Monsalvo, I., Hales, A., Jackson, A. P., Hughes, A. Meredith, Lagrange, A.- M., Matthews, B. and Wilner, D. 2014. Molecular gas clumps from the destruction of icy bodies in the β Pictoris debris disk. Science 343 (6178) , pp. 1490-1492. 10.1126/science.1248726

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Many stars are surrounded by disks of dusty debris formed in the collisions of asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets, but is gas also released in such events? Observations at submillimeter wavelengths of the archetypal debris disk around β Pictoris show that 0.3% of a Moon mass of carbon monoxide orbits in its debris belt. The gas distribution is highly asymmetric, with 30% found in a single clump 85 astronomical units from the star, in a plane closely aligned with the orbit of the inner planet, β Pictoris b. This gas clump delineates a region of enhanced collisions, either from a mean motion resonance with an unseen giant planet or from the remnants of a collision of Mars-mass planets

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Publisher:	American Association for the Advancement of Science
ISSN:	0036-8075
Date of Acceptance:	20 February 2014
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2022 09:56
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/89708

Citation Data

Cited 94 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item