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“A Spitzer View of the Epsilon Eridani Planetary System” Dr. Massimo Marengo Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics |
| When a "radial velocity" planet was discovered orbiting our neighbour star epsilon Eridani, it was thought that the home of the Star Trek "Vulcans" was finally found. Even though it was later determined that Dr. Spock was originally from a different stellar system, epsilon Eridani remains the best available example to study a younger, dustier solar system analog. With an age of 850 Myr and a spectral type of K2V, it is a young main sequence star with a mass just below that of the Sun. Apart from the Jupiter-size planet detected with radial velocity techniques, it also harbors a dusty "debris disk" found by IRAS and first imaged at sub-mm wavelengths, roughly the size of our own Kuiper belt. These characteristics, and the proximity of epsilon Eridani to the Sun (just 3.2 pc), make it the ideal subject to study what could have been the early history of our own solar system. The Spitzer Space Telescope, with its high sensitivity and stability, offers a unique perspective to complete this picture, at wavelengths where the dust emission from the disk are stronger, and it is easier to search for direct emission from planetary mass companions. We have observed epsilon Eridani with all Spitzer instruments, deriving for the first time a comprehensive view of its planetary system. |