Astronomers Find Remarkable Diversities in Planetary Debris Systems

Circumstellar "disks" of material are both the progenitors and the outcomes of planetary system formation processes. Steward Observatory Astronomer Dr. Glenn Schneider and collaborators have now published a major Hubble Space Telescope (HST) based study of massive systems of exoplanetary, starlight-scattering, debris around a sample of nearby stars of different stellar ages and masses. Using imaging data they obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph's visible-light coronagraph (suppressing the otherwise blinding glare of the starlight illuminating these circumstellar disks of orbiting debris) they found an astounding diversity in debris disk morphologies, architectures, and inferred particle properties. These images directly inform on the posited interactions between the dusty debris episodically replenished by (sometimes catastrophic) collisions of "parent" bodies, planets (unseen) co-orbiting within (and "stirring") the debris disks, and other forces intrinsic and extrinsic to the systems, as well as on the physical properties of the inter- (and exo-) planetary material. Pictures appearing on the cover of the Oct 2014 Astronomical Journal illustrate some of the structural and morphological diversity in these systems. A link to the STSCI press release can be found HERE. The UA News story can be found HERE.