Letter to the Editor

Spatially resolved submillimeter imaging of the HR 8799 debris disk^⋆,⋆⋆

¹ Astrophysics Group, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QL, UK
e-mail: joanna@astro.ex.ac.uk
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2451, USA
³ UJF-Grenoble 1/CNRS-INSU, Institut de Plantologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, UMR 5274, Grenoble, 38041, France
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800, USA
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Caltech, MC 249-17, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
⁶ School of Physics & Astronomy, Tate Lab Room 148, 116 Church Street S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

Received: 1 June 2011
Accepted: 21 June 2011

Abstract

Dynamical interactions between planets and debris disks may sculpt the disk structure and impact planetary orbits, but only a few systems with both imaged planets and spatially resolved debris disks are known. With the Caltech Submm Observatory (CSO), we have observed the HR 8799 debris disk at 350 μm. The 350 μm map is the first spatially resolved measurement of the debris disk encircling the HR 8799 planetary system at this wavelength. Both the flux and size of the emission are consistent with a Kuiper belt of dust extending from  ~100–300 AU. Although the resolution of the current map is limited, the map shows an indication of offset asymmetric emission, and several scenarios for this possibility are explored with radiative transfer calculations of a star-disk system and N-body numerical simulations of planet-disk interactions with parameters representative of the HR 8799 system.