A Herschel resolved far-infrared dust ring around HD 207129

TL;DR

This study uses Herschel observations to resolve a dust ring around HD 207129, providing detailed measurements of its structure and placing it in context with similar debris discs around Sun-like stars.

Contribution

First resolution of the dust-producing planetesimal belt around HD 207129 at 100 μm, revealing the disc's inner gap and enabling detailed comparison with other debris discs.

Findings

Resolved the debris disc's inner gap at 70 and 100 μm.

Measured the disc's radial profile and fractional luminosity.

Compared the disc's properties with similar systems to contextualize its features.

Abstract

Dusty debris discs around main sequence stars are thought to be the result of continuous collisional grinding of planetesimals in the system. The majority of these systems are unresolved and analysis of the dust properties is limited by the lack of information regarding the dust location.vThe Herschel DUNES key program is observing 133 nearby, Sun-like stars (<20 pc, FGK spectral type) in a volume limited survey to constrain the absolute incidence of cold dust around these stars by detection of far infrared excess emission at flux levels comparable to the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt (EKB). We have observed the Sun-like star HD 207129 with Herschel PACS and SPIRE. In all three PACS bands we resolve a ring-like structure consistent with scattered light observations. Using {\alpha} Bo\"otis as a reference point spread function (PSF), we deconvolved the images, clearly resolving the inner gap in the disc at both 70 and 100 {\mu}m. We have resolved the dust-producing planetesimal belt of a debris disc at 100 {\mu}m for the first time. We measure the radial profile and fractional luminosity of the disc, and compare the values to those of discs around stars of similar age and/or spectral type, placing this disc in context of other resolved discs observed by Herschel/DUNES.