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Catrina Hamilton-Drager |
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"Reflected Light from Sand
Grains in the Terrestrial Zone of a Protoplanetary Disk" |
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In the standard model of terrestrial planet formation, the first step in the process is for interstellar dust to coagulate within a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, forming large grains that settle towards the disk plane. Here, I report observations of a 3 Myr old star, which show that grains have grown to about millimeter size or larger in the terrestrial zone (within ~ 3 AU) of this star. The fortuitous geometry of the KH 15D binary system allows us to infer that, when both stars are occulted by the surrounding disk, it appears as a nearly edge-on ring illuminated by one of the central binary components. |