The HOSTS Survey for Exozodiacal Dust: Preliminary results and future prospects
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Authors
Ertel, S
Kennedy, GM
Defrère, D
Hinz, P
Shannon, AB
Mennesson, B
Danchi, WC
Gelino, C
Hill, JM
Hoffmann, WF
Rieke, G
Spalding, E
Stone, JM
Vaz, A
Weinberger, AJ
Willems, P
Absil, O
Arbo, P
Bailey, VP
Beichman, C
Bryden, G
Downey, EC
Durney, O
Esposito, S
Gaspar, A
Grenz, P
Leisenring, JM
Marion, L
McMahon, TJ
Millan-Gabet, R
Montoya, M
Morzinski, KM
Pinna, E
Power, J
Puglisi, A
Roberge, A
Serabyn, E
Skemer, AJ
Stapelfeldt, K
Su, KYL
Vaitheeswaran, V
Publication Date
2018Journal Title
PROCEEDINGS VOLUME 10698 SPIE ASTRONOMICAL TELESCOPES + INSTRUMENTATION
ISSN
0277-786X
Publisher
SPIE
Volume
10698
Language
eng
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Ertel, S., Kennedy, G., Defrère, D., Hinz, P., Shannon, A., Mennesson, B., Danchi, W., et al. (2018). The HOSTS Survey for Exozodiacal Dust: Preliminary results and future
prospects. PROCEEDINGS VOLUME 10698 SPIE ASTRONOMICAL TELESCOPES + INSTRUMENTATION, 10698 https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2313685
Abstract
[abridged] The presence of large amounts of dust in the habitable zones of
nearby stars is a significant obstacle for future exo-Earth imaging missions.
We executed an N band nulling interferometric survey to determine the typical
amount of such exozodiacal dust around a sample of nearby main sequence stars.
The majority of our data have been analyzed and we present here an update of
our ongoing work. We find seven new N band excesses in addition to the high
confidence confirmation of three that were previously known. We find the first
detections around Sun-like stars and around stars without previously known
circumstellar dust. Our overall detection rate is 23%. The inferred occurrence
rate is comparable for early type and Sun-like stars, but decreases from 71%
[+11%/-20%] for stars with previously detected mid- to far-infrared excess to
11% [+9%/-4%] for stars without such excess, confirming earlier results at high
confidence. For completed observations on individual stars, our sensitivity is
five to ten times better than previous results. Assuming a lognormal luminosity
function of the dust, we find upper limits on the median dust level around all
stars without previously known mid to far infrared excess of 11.5 zodis at 95%
confidence level. The corresponding upper limit for Sun-like stars is 16 zodis.
An LBTI vetted target list of Sun-like stars for exo-Earth imaging would have a
corresponding limit of 7.5 zodis. We provide important new insights into the
occurrence rate and typical levels of habitable zone dust around main sequence
stars. Exploiting the full range of capabilities of the LBTI provides a
critical opportunity for the detailed characterization of a sample of
exozodiacal dust disks to understand the origin, distribution, and properties
of the dust.
Keywords
astro-ph.EP, astro-ph.EP
Sponsorship
GMK is supported by the Royal Society as a Royal Society University Research Fellow. AS is partially supported by funding from the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds. The Center for Exoplanets and
Habitable Worlds is supported by the Pennsylvania State University, the Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. JMS is supported by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HSTHF2-51398.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555.
Funder references
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/N000927/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2313685
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/279625
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