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Astronomy

Warm dust makes a fast getaway

Nature volume 487, pages 45–46 (2012)Cite this article

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A rapid drop in infrared emission from a Sun-like star could indicate that a drastic event has cleared a circumstellar disk of dusty debris — the material from which planets form. See Letter p.74

The formation and destruction of planetary bodies such as asteroids and comets are the main events that sculpt the dusty disks around young stars. During these processes, large quantities of dust are swept from the disk into nascent planets (planetesimals), paths are cleared by these bodies' orbits, and material is re-released from existing planetesimals through destructive collisions or sublimation. We know that such processes were involved in forming the architecture of the Solar System, as well as that of the ever-increasing number of planetary systems being discovered around stars other than the Sun1. But the precise timescales and conditions required for the formation of planets in the disks are still under investigation. On page 74 of this issue, Melis et al.2 report that the infrared radiation attributed to a dusty disk around a Sun-like star has diminished by a factor of about 30 in less than 2 years. The researchers propose that this reduction has arisen because of a correspondingly drastic depletion of the dust disk through the mechanisms outlined above. Although the data are not yet supported by any theoretical model, the system in question is remarkable for the speed with which its surrounding material seems to have disappeared.

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Figure 1: Dimming disk.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Margaret Moerchen is at the Leiden Observatory, 2333 CA Leiden, the Netherlands, and at the European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile.,

    Margaret Moerchen

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  1. Margaret Moerchen
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Correspondence to Margaret Moerchen.

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Moerchen, M. Warm dust makes a fast getaway. Nature 487, 45–46 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/487045a

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