Program: GN-2006A-Q-39

We have recently identified several dozen previously unknown mid-IR excess candidate stars from a cross correlation search between Hipparcos dwarfs and IRAS sources. Visual inspection of the digital sky survey images was performed for all candidate excess stars to eliminate any false positive such as a case of nearby galaxies falling in the large IRAS beam. Then, we selected a subset of statistically the most significant excess candidate stars using an automated spectral energy distribution fitting technique with high fidelity model stellar spectra. The final list of the excess candidate stars represents unprecendented, most thoroughly examined, high quality excess stars. We request to use Gemini Michelle/T-ReCS to confirm excess emission of these excess candidates. One of candidate excess stars in our list, BD+20 307, was observed recently with Michelle and it was confirmed to be a real excess star showing huge amount of warm dust grains around a Sun-like star. The result was published in Nature (July 2005). When a fair fraction of excess stars get confirmed to be real, out study implies the existence of a significant population of extra-solar asteroidal material around nearby main sequence stars and for the worst case, we can strongly constrain such a population from Michelle/T-ReCS data. This program can be executed under almost any observing conditions (WV=any, IQ=any, Sky brightness=any, and CC=70%).