Free Access
Issue
A&A
Volume 546, October 2012
Article Number L8
Number of page(s) 5
Section Letters
DOI https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201219745
Published online 16 October 2012

Online material

Appendix A: HD 172555 photometry compilation

Table A.1 shows a compilation of current literature and Herschel photometry for HD 172555.

Table A.1

Available photometry.

Appendix B: How to derive the oxygen mass

In the following we explain how to derive the atomic oxygen gas mass from prompt emission level population. To estimate the mass of oxygen gas we consider the excitation of atomic oxygen to its first fine structure level in the absence of a collisional partner. This situation happens in very low density environments such as debris discs. The main mechanism involved is the so-called prompt emission and fluorescence. The prompt emission involves the absorption of a photon from the star or from the dust at the precise wavelength of the atomic emission, and subsequent re-emission. To model the emission, we assume that the ground state is the most populated. The population at steady-state for level is given by: (B.1)Assuming that only the first two levels are populated (n = n0 + n1), (B.2)since g0B01 = g1B10 and B10 = (c2/2hν3)A10, the fractional population is (B.3)For OI we have g0 = 5, g1 = 3. J10 is computed using the distance-dilluted stellar flux in the Rayleigh-Jeans regime at 63 μm: (B.4)where R is the distance to the star and R the stellar radius. We obtain J10 = 2.273 × 10-13 × (1 AU/ R(AU))2 erg s-1 cm-2 Hz-1 sr-1, and the fractional population is thus: x = 8.67 × 10-5

The number of oxygen atoms given the flux in cgs is then (B.5)where 9.5216 × 1036 combines the conversion from arcsec2 to steradian and from AU to parsec.

The effect of including additional excitation paths is negligible. We compare this with a situation when the emission is produced at 1 AU from the star. For example, if we include all main fluorescence pumping paths (  →   →  ,  →   →  , and  →   →   →  ), the final mass of oxygen is M([OI] ) = 0.0247 M, compared to M([OI] ) = 0.025 M obtained when we only include the main excitation path.


© ESO, 2012

Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.

Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.

Initial download of the metrics may take a while.