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SUMMARY:Observations of exozodiacal disks - Augereau\, J-C (Joseph Fourier
  Grenoble )
DTSTART:20090821T103000Z
DTEND:20090821T105000Z
UID:TALK19497@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mustapha Amrani
DESCRIPTION:The zodiacal cloud has long been suspected to have extrasolar 
 analogs\, exozodiacal\, debris clouds that remained elusive until very rec
 ently. Over the last decade\, the presence of exozodiacal dust in the habi
 table zone around nearby stars\, has essentially been discussed as a poten
 tial noise source that may compromise the ability of future exo-Earth find
 ing missions to reach their goals. Our pioneering detection of exozodiacal
  dust around Vega in 2006 by near-IR interferometry shows that exozodis ar
 e by themself very interesting astrophysical objects. During this talk\, I
  will review the current observations of exozodiacal dust disks around nea
 rby main sequence stars\, and show that\, as a rule of thumb\, the detecte
 d exozodiacal dust disks differ from the zodiacal cloud. I will then discu
 ss possible dynamical scenarios that may give rise to an abundant producti
 on of exozodiacal dust. I will show that a promising scenario involves the
  outward migration of a planet destabilizing a planetesimal belt similar t
 o the Kuiper belt\, and responsible for a cometary bombardment. 
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1 Newton Institute
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