2008/01/30 by Lucas Cieza, Lucas A. Cieza, William D. Cochran +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Debris #Debris disk #Galaxy #Luminosity #Physics #Planetary system #Spitzer Space Telescope #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/586887
33 pages, 11 figures, accepted by ApJ
arxiv created 2008/01/30 · openalex publication_date 2008/05/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We use the Spitzer Space Telescope to search for infrared excess at 24, 70, and 160 μm due to debris disks around a sample of 45 FGK-type members of the Hyades. We supplement our observations with archival 24 and 70 μm Spitzer data of an additional 22 FGK-type and 11 A-type Hyades members in order to provide robust statistics on the incidence of debris disks at 625 Myr of age, an era corresponding to the late heavy bombardment in the solar system. We find that none of the 67 FGK-type stars in our sample show evidence for a debris disk, while 2 out of the 11 A-type stars do. This difference in debris disk detection rate is likely to be due to a sensitivity bias in favor of early-type stars. The fractional disk luminosity, L dust / L * , of the disks around the two A-type stars is ~4 × 10 −5 , a level that is below the sensitivity of our observations toward the FGK-type stars. However, our sensitivity limits for FGK-type stars are able to exclude, at the 2 σ level, frequencies higher than 12% and 5% of disks with L dust / L * > 1 × 10 −4 and L dust / L * > 5 × 10 −4 , respectively. We also use our sensitivity limits and debris disk models to constrain the maximum mass of dust, as a function of distance from the stars, that could remain undetected around our targets.