Program: GS-2004B-Q-92

Title:Spectro-astrometry of rotating disks around early type stars
PI:Deborah Baines
Co-I(s): Rene Oudmaijer, John Porter, Melvin Hoare, Stuart Lumsden

Abstract

To date, our knowledge of the formation of the intermediate mass Herbig Ae/Be stars and the geometry of their circumstellar material at small scales is scarce at best. Observational evidence that some of these objects have small scale disks has only just appeared. With this proposal we aim to observe disks around a small subsample of close Herbig Ae/Be stars using spectro-astrometry centred on Paschen Beta. Additionally, we wish to observe a set of nearby Be stars for proof-of-concept. Our recent spectro-astrometric results confirm that this technique is capable of probing the geometries of Herbig Ae/Be and Be stars at scales of a few milli-arcseconds. The proposed observations will improve on these resolutions by at least a factor of 10 (aiming for 0.2 milli-arcsecond scales).

Publications using this program's data