JWST-TST High Contrast: Asymmetries, Dust Populations, and Hints of a Collision in the β Pictoris Disk with NIRCam and MIRI

Rebollido, Isabel; Stark, Christopher C.; Kammerer, Jens; Perrin, Marshall D.; Lawson, Kellen; Pueyo, Laurent; Chen, Christine; Hines, Dean; Girard, Julien H.; Worthen, Kadin; Ingerbretsen, Carl; Betti, Sarah; Clampin, Mark; Golimowski, David; Hoch, Kielan; Lewis, Nikole K.; Lu, Cicero X.; van der Marel, Roeland P.; Rickman, Emily; Seager, Sara; Soummer, Rémi; Valenti, Jeff A.; Ward-Duong, Kimberly; Mountain, C. Matt

doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ad1759

Cited by 12 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…This paper is part of a series by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Telescope Scientist Team, 12 In this paper, we continue to present the first coronagraphic observations of the β Pic system with the JWST (Gardner et al 2006(Gardner et al , 2023 Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam; Rieke et al 2003Rieke et al , 2023, spanning a wavelength range from ∼1.7 to 5 μm. We previously reported in Rebollido et al (2024) on the edgeon debris disk around β Pic as seen in these same NIRCam data, along with coronagraphic observations at 15.5 and 23 μm obtained with the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI; Rieke et al 2015;Wright et al 2015Wright et al , 2023, which led to the discovery of a dramatic curved "tail" of dust that appears to extend sharply away from the plane of the disk and may be unbound debris from a recent major collision of large planetesimals.…”

Section: Programmatic Contextsupporting

confidence: 57%

JWST-TST High Contrast: JWST/NIRCam Observations of the Young Giant Planet β Pic b

Kammerer,

Lawson,

Perrin

et al. 2024

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We present the first JWST/NIRCam observations of the directly imaged gas giant exoplanet β Pic b. Observations in six filters using NIRCam's round coronagraphic masks provide a high-signal-to-noise-ratio detection of β Pic b and the archetypal debris disk around β Pic over a wavelength range of ∼1.7–5 μm. This paper focuses on the detection of β Pic b and other potential point sources in the NIRCam data, following a paper by Rebollido et al. that presented the NIRCam and MIRI view of the debris disk around β Pic. We develop and validate approaches to obtaining accurate photometry of planets in the presence of bright, complex circumstellar backgrounds. By simultaneously fitting the planet’s point-spread function and a geometric model for the disk, we obtain planet photometry that is in good agreement with previous measurements from the ground. The NIRCam data support the cloudy nature of β Pic b’s atmosphere and the discrepancy between its mass as inferred from evolutionary models and the dynamical mass reported in the literature. We further identify five additional localized sources in the data, but all of them are found to be background stars or galaxies based on their color or spatial extent. We can rule out additional planets in the disk midplane above 1 M Jup outward of 2″ (∼40 au) and away from the disk midplane above 0.05 M Jup outward of 4″ (∼80 au). The inner giant planet β Pic c remains undetected behind the coronagraphic masks of NIRCam in our observations.

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Section: Programmatic Contextsupporting

confidence: 57%

JWST-TST High Contrast: JWST/NIRCam Observations of the Young Giant Planet β Pic b

Kammerer,

Lawson,

Perrin

et al. 2024

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“…For this purpose, we skip dark current subtraction, 16 adopt a border of 4 pixels as pseudo-reference pixels, and use a jump detection threshold of 4. This step now also includes a 1/f (frequency) noise correction procedure to eliminate instrumental striping that can otherwise manifest in the data (see description in Rebollido et al 2024).…”

Section: Data Reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In MCRDI, a synthetic image of the circumstellar scene is used to prevent systematic overestimation of the stellar PSF's brightness during construction of the stellar PSF model (Lawson et al 2022(Lawson et al , 2023Rebollido et al 2024), which otherwise results in so-called "oversubtraction" (e.g., Pueyo 2016). To apply MCRDI, an initial unconstrained RDI reduction is carried out.…”

Section: Model-constrained Rdimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the MCRDI reductions, we make no additional corrections for PSF subtraction algorithm throughput. While the brightness of any companions would be decreased slightly by the MCRDI procedure (by 10%; see Figure 5 of Lawson et al 2023), any companion candidates identified with marginal significance could be directly incorporated into the circumstellar model for MCRDI to avoid this (e.g., Rebollido et al 2024). As such, the companion itself can be assumed to have no effect on the 5σ detection limits for MCRDI.…”

Section: Companion Detection Limitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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JWST/NIRCam Detection of the Fomalhaut C Debris Disk in Scattered Light

Lawson,

Schlieder,

Leisenring

et al. 2024

ApJL

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Observations of debris disks offer important insights into the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Though M dwarfs make up approximately 80% of nearby stars, very few M dwarf debris disks have been studied in detail—making it unclear how or if the information gleaned from studying debris disks around more massive stars extends to the more abundant M dwarf systems. We report the first scattered-light detection of the debris disk around the M4 star Fomalhaut C using JWST's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam; 3.6 and 4.4 μm). This result adds to the prior sample of only four M dwarf debris disks with detections in scattered light and marks the latest spectral type and oldest star among them. The size and orientation of the disk in these data are generally consistent with the prior Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array submillimeter detection. Though no companions are identified, these data provide strong constraints on their presence—with sensitivity sufficient to recover sub-Saturn mass objects in the vicinity of the disk. This result illustrates the unique capability of JWST to uncover elusive M dwarf debris disks in scattered light and lays the groundwork for deeper studies of such objects in the 2–5 μm regime.

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“…β Pictoris (β Pic hereafter) is a ∼23 Myr (Mamajek & Bell 2014) A6V star that is host to the first ever imaged debris disk (Smith & Terrile 1984). The β Pic disk is oriented close to edge on from our line of sight and has been studied in scattered light as well as thermal emission at mid-infrared and millimeter wavelengths (e.g., Telesco et al 2005;Golimowski et al 2006;Matrà et al 2019;Rebollido et al 2024). At a distance of 19.6 pc (Gaia Collaboration et al 2023), β Pic provides a great laboratory for studying the spatial structure of its debris disk.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MIRI MRS Observations of β Pictoris. I. The Inner Dust, the Planet, and the Gas

Worthen,

Chen,

Law

et al. 2024

ApJ

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We present JWST MIRI Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS) observations of the β Pictoris system. We detect an infrared excess from the central unresolved point source from 5 to 7.5 μm which is indicative of dust within the inner ∼7 au of the system. We perform point-spread function (PSF) subtraction on the MRS data cubes and detect a spatially resolved dust population emitting at 5 μm. This spatially resolved hot dust population is best explained if the dust grains are in the small grain limit (2πa ≪ λ). The combination of unresolved and resolved dust at 5 μm could suggest that dust grains are being produced in the inner few astronomical units of the system and are then radiatively driven outwards, where the particles could accrete onto the known planets in the system, β Pictoris b and c. We also report the detection of an emission line at 6.986 μm that we attribute to [Ar ii]. We find that the [Ar ii] emission is spatially resolved with JWST and appears to be aligned with the dust disk. Through PSF-subtraction techniques, we detect β Pictoris b at the 5σ level in our MRS data cubes and present the first mid-infrared spectrum of the planet from 5 to 7 μm. The planet’s spectrum is consistent with having absorption from water vapor between 5 and 6.5 μm. We perform atmosphere model grid fitting of the spectra and photometry of β Pictoris b and find that the planet’s atmosphere likely has a substellar C/O ratio.

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JWST-TST High Contrast: Asymmetries, Dust Populations, and Hints of a Collision in the β Pictoris Disk with NIRCam and MIRI

Cited by 12 publications

References 92 publications

JWST-TST High Contrast: JWST/NIRCam Observations of the Young Giant Planet β Pic b

JWST-TST High Contrast: JWST/NIRCam Observations of the Young Giant Planet β Pic b

JWST/NIRCam Detection of the Fomalhaut C Debris Disk in Scattered Light

MIRI MRS Observations of β Pictoris. I. The Inner Dust, the Planet, and the Gas

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