A Mid-IR Study of Protoplanetary & Debris Disks around Intermediate-Mass Stars

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Telesco, Charles"A Mid-IR Study of Protoplanetary & Debris Disks around Intermediate-Mass Stars"AST-0098392Understanding the birth and evolution of planets is one of the most intriguing and challenging tasks in modern astronomy. During the period of this award, the PI and his team will use state-of-the-art infrared imagers, built mainly by themselves, to image the distribution of warm dust in disks. The imagers will be used at many of the world's largest 8 and 10m telescopes. They are sensitive to mid-infrared radiation from 8 to 25 microns that is emitted by the dust within several hundred astronomical units of the star. Key program goals are to critically constrain how coalescence and planet formation can proceed and to look for disk distortions and other signatures resulting from the influence of planets that have already formed.***