Spitzer Finds Debris Disks Surrounding Binary Stars

[brellis]

<font color="orange"><b>Double Sunsets and Sunlit Nights</b><br /><br />A study to be published in the April 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal suggests that it's not only possible to have planets in double star systems, it's at least as likely as having planets in single-star systems like ours!<br />The study is based upon observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope of 69 nearby binary star systems (50 to 200 light-years from here) where the two stars were regular, main-sequence stars a little younger and a little more massive than our own Sun, and where the two stars were closer to each other than 500 Astronomical Units. (1 AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun; for scale, Neptune orbits at 30 AU from the Sun.) Spitzer is an infrared telescope, and it's exceptionally good at detecting the heat being emitted from star-warmed dust, the kind you find in the circumstellar debris disks that can birth planets. According to the press release, the Spitzer data revealed that 40 percent of these systems had dust disks, which is a little higher than for a comparable sample of single stars. Even more surprising, disks were even more common around the tightest binaries; they were found around 60 percent of the star systems. Because I don't have access to the full journal article I don't know how many of the observed star systems this is -- this may be statistics of small numbers -- but still, it seems safe to conclude, as the authors of the study do, that nothing seems to be preventing dust disks from forming around tight binaries. <br /></font><br /><br />- from Emily Lakdawalla's Planetary blog<br /><br />"Double Sunsets and Sunlit Nights" -- *sigh* - I'm an incurable romantic, and incurably hopeful that we'll find some ET's out there somewhere.<br /><br />In an earlier thread, stevehw found this Science Daily Article th <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#ff0000"><em><strong>I'm a recovering optimist - things could be better.</strong></em></font> </p> </div>

 

[brellis]

JPL's Article on the Spitzer findings. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#ff0000"><em><strong>I'm a recovering optimist - things could be better.</strong></em></font> </p> </div>