• DOI:10.1051/0004-6361:20054522
• Corpus ID: 2165054

Circumstellar material in the Vega inner system revealed by CHARA/FLUOR

@article{Absil2006CircumstellarMI,
  title={Circumstellar material in the Vega inner system revealed by CHARA/FLUOR},
  author={Olivier Absil and Emmanuel di Folco and A. M{\'e}rand and Jean Augereau and Vincent Coud{\'e} du Foresto and Jason Paul Aufdenberg and Pierre Kervella and Stephen T. Ridgway and David H. Berger and Theo A. ten Brummelaar and Judit Sturmann and Laszlo Sturmann and Nils H. Turner and Harold A. Mcalister},
  journal={Astronomy and Astrophysics},
  year={2006},
  volume={452},
  pages={237-244}
}

• O. Absil, E. Folco, +11 authors H. Mcalister
• Published 12 April 2006
• Physics, Geology
• Astronomy and Astrophysics

Context. Only a handful of debris disks have been imaged up to now. Due to the need for high dynamic range and high angular resolution, very little is known about the inner planetary region, where small amounts of warm dust are expected to be found. Aims. We investigate the close neighbourhood of Vega with the help of infrared stellar interferometry and estimate the integrated K-band flux originating from the central 8 AU of the debris disk. Methods. We performed precise visibility measurements at both short (∼30 m) and long (∼150 m) baselines with the FLUOR beamcombiner installed at the CHARA Array (Mt Wilson, California) in order to separately resolve the emissions from the extended debris disk (short baselines) and from the stellar photosphere (long baselines). Results. After revising Vega’s K-band angular diameter (θUD = 3.202 ± 0.005 mas), we show that a significant deficit in squared visibility (∆V 2 = 1.88 ± 0.34%) is detected at short baselines with respect to the best-fit uniform disk stellar model. This deficit can be either attributed to the presence of a low-mass stellar companion around Vega, or as the signature of the thermal and scattered emissions from the debris disk. We show that the presence of a close companion is highly unlikely, as well as other possible perturbations (stellar morphology, calibration), and deduce that we have most probably detected the presence of dust in the close neighbourhood of Vega. The resulting flux ratio between the stellar photosphere and the debris disk amounts to 1.29 ± 0.19% within the FLUOR field-of-view (∼7.8 AU). Finally, we complement our K-band study with archival photometric and interferometric data in order to evaluate the main physical properties of the inner dust disk. The inferred properties suggest that the Vega system could be currently undergoing major dynamical perturbations.