Observations of Circumstellar Disks

Abstract

IRAS observations first showed that a sizable fraction of the nearby stars are (still) surrounded by dust disks (Cheng et al. [3]), the most prominent prototypes of this class of dusty stars being Vega, β Pic, and α PsA. Such dust or debris disks have generated particular interest in the framework of young earth-like planetary systems. The analysis of both gas and dust in circumstellar disks is of fundamental importance for any theoretical CS disk model, for an investigation of the CS disks dynamics, and for a determination of the disk masses.