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Reflected light from sand grains in the terrestrial zone of a protoplanetary disk

Nature volume 452, pages 194–197 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

In the standard model of terrestrial planet formation, the first step in the process is for interstellar dust to coagulate within a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, forming large grains that settle towards the disk plane1. Interstellar grains of typical size ∼0.1 μm are expected to grow to millimetre- (sand), centimetre- (pebble) or even metre-sized (boulder) objects rather quickly2. Unfortunately, such evolved disks are hard to observe because the ratio of surface area to volume of their constituents is small. We readily detect dust around young objects known as ‘classical’ T Tauri stars, but there is little or no evidence of it in the slightly more evolved ‘weak-line’ systems3. Here we report observations of a 3-Myr-old star, which show that grains have grown to about millimetre size or larger in the terrestrial zone (within ∼3 au) of this star. The fortuitous geometry of the KH 15D binary star system allows us to infer that, when both stars are occulted by the surrounding disk, it appears as a nearly edge-on ring illuminated by one of the central binary components. This work complements the study of terrestrial zones of younger disks that have been recently resolved by interferometry4,5,6.

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Figure 1: Schematic drawings showing our interpretation of the geometry of the KH 15D system.
Figure 2: Brightness variation of KH 15D with elevation of star A.
Figure 3: Spectral variation of KH 15D with elevation of star A.
Figure 4: Colour variation of KH 15D with elevation of star A.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based on work supported by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through the Origins of Solar Systems programme. Some of the data presented here were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory from telescope time allocated to NASA through the agency’s scientific partnership with the California Institute of Technology and the University of California. The Observatory was made possible by the financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We appreciate comments from E. Chiang, M. Gilmore, J. Greenwood and E. Jensen.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Astronomy Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 06459, USA,

    William Herbst & Katherine LeDuc

  2. Physics and Astronomy Department, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania 17013, USA,

    Catrina M. Hamilton

  3. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Joshua N. Winn

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA,

    Christopher M. Johns-Krull

  5. Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany,

    Reinhard Mundt

  6. Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Astronomicheskaya 33, 700052 Tashkent, Uzbekistan,

    Mansur Ibrahimov

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  1. William Herbst
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  2. Catrina M. Hamilton
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  4. Joshua N. Winn
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  5. Christopher M. Johns-Krull
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  6. Reinhard Mundt
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  7. Mansur Ibrahimov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to William Herbst.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains three sections of supplementary information and a Supplementary Figure 1 with Legend. Section 1 explains our calculation of the variation of optical depth with elevation for star A and includes a figure. Section 2 explains the model light curve. Section 3 is a derivation of the expression for optical depth. (PDF 94 kb)

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Herbst, W., Hamilton, C., LeDuc, K. et al. Reflected light from sand grains in the terrestrial zone of a protoplanetary disk. Nature 452, 194–197 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06671

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