High Angular Resolution Observations of Protostellar Disks

Abstract

The existence of circumstellar disks around young stellar objects like T Tauri stars is now well accepted. Such disks would have solar system sizes and, at the distance of the nearest star forming cloud, an angular diameter of 0.01 to 1 arcsecond at most, requiring very high angular resolution to be detected. Due to the nature of the emission process in circumstellar disks and to chromatic properties of ground based observations, disk imaging is expected to be more efficient in the near infrared. Also, multi-aperture interferometry in this wavelength range (1 – 10 μm) is expected to bring considerable insight into the disks properties and evolution in revealing their inner physical structure.In this paper, we present synthetic images of circumstellar accretion disks. The images have been computed from a complete disk vertical structure model.