The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their June meeting in the Library Commons Area, Cochise College Sierra Vista campus on June 17, 2016 at 7 PM. Our speaker will be Stephanie Sallum, a fourth year astronomy graduate student at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. The meeting is FREE and open to the public.
Steph is interested in how high contrast imaging can contribute to our understanding of planet formation. Her thesis work has been using the novel imaging technique of non-redundant masking to search for and image accreting planets in transition disk clearings. Before coming to the Steward Observatory, she did undergraduate work at MIT in the Planetary Astronomy Lab studying Pluto’s atmosphere. When she is not doing astronomy she is usually out rock climbing.
Her talk will be entitled “Imaging Protoplanets: Observing Transition Disks Using Non-Redundant Masking”
Abstract
Transition disks, protoplanetary disks with inner, solar-system-sized clearings, present an opportunity to witness planet formation in action. I will present new observations of two transition disks, T Cha and LkCa 15, both of which host hypothesized sub-stellar mass companions within their disk clearings. T Cha observations taken using the Very Large Telescope and the Magellan Adaptive Optics System (MagAO) between 2010 and 2013 cannot be explained by an orbiting companion in the disk clearing. Conversely, data taken using the Large Binocular Telescope as well as MagAO confirm the previous detection in the LkCa 15 disk. These new datasets and re-analyzed archival Keck observations suggest the presence of multiple forming planets in LkCa 15. I will describe how scattering from the outer disk can match the T Cha datasets, why such a model is unsuitable for LKCa 15, and the characteristics of the LkCa 15 protoplanetary system.