Born-again protoplanetary disk around Mira B

Creators: Ireland, M. J.; Monnier, J. D.; Tuthill, P. G.; Cohen, R. W.; De Buizer, J. M.; Packham, C.; Ciardi, D.; Hayward, T.; Lloyd, J. P.

Abstract

The Mira AB system is a nearby (~107 pc) example of a wind accreting binary star system. In this class of system, the wind from a mass-losing red giant star (Mira A) is accreted onto a companion (Mira B), as indicated by an accretion shock signature in spectra at ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. Using novel imaging techniques, we report the detection of emission at mid-infrared wavelengths between 9.7 and 18.3 µm from the vicinity of Mira B but with a peak at a radial position about 10 AU closer to the primary Mira A. We interpret the mid-infrared emission as the edge of an optically-thick accretion disk heated by Mira A. The discovery of this new class of accretion disk fed by M-giant mass loss implies a potential population of young planetary systems in white dwarf binaries, which has been little explored despite being relatively common in the solar neighborhood.

Additional Information

© 2007 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 February 16; accepted 2007 March 10. We gratefully acknowledge the support of Charles Townes, the assistance of Marc Kassis in making the Keck observations, the assistance of Adwin Boogert in planning the Gemini observations, and helpful discussions with Nuria Calvet and Klaus Pontoppidan. M. I. would like to acknowledge Michelson Fellowship support from the Michelson Science Center and the NASA Navigator Program. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, the INES principle center, and the IRAF Point Source Catalog. J. D. M. acknowledges support from the grant NASA-JPL 1267021. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. Based in part on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (United Kingdom), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Australian Research Council (Australia), CNPq (Brazil), and CONICET (Argentina).

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