First scattered-light images of the gas-rich debris disk around 49 Ceti

TL;DR

This paper provides the first direct scattered-light images of the debris disk around 49 Ceti, revealing its structure, grain properties, and gas content, and compares it to similar systems to understand its composition and evolution.

Contribution

First direct imaging of 49 Ceti's debris disk in scattered light, refining its structure, inclination, and dust properties, and analyzing its gas content and similarities to other gas-rich debris disks.

Findings

Disk extends from 65 to 250 AU with 73° inclination.

Dust grains are larger than 2 microns, with a grey scattering color.

Gas is present inside the disk but CO is depleted.

Abstract

We present the first scattered-light images of the debris disk around 49 ceti, a ~40 Myr A1 main sequence star at 59 pc, famous for hosting two massive dust belts as well as large quantities of atomic and molecular gas. The outer disk is revealed in reprocessed archival Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS F110W images, as well as new coronagraphic H band images from the Very Large Telescope SPHERE instrument. The disk extends from 1.1" (65 AU) to 4.6" (250 AU), and is seen at an inclination of 73degr, which refines previous measurements at lower angular resolution. We also report no companion detection larger than 3 M_Jup at projected separations beyond 20 AU from the star (0.34"). Comparison between the F110W and H-band images is consistent with a grey color of 49 ceti's dust, indicating grains larger than >2microns. Our photometric measurements indicate a scattering efficiency / infrared excess ratio of 0.2-0.4, relatively low compared to other characterized debris disks. We find that 49 ceti presents morphological and scattering properties very similar to the gas-rich HD 131835 system. From our constraint on the disk inclination we find that the atomic gas previously detected in absorption must extend to the inner disk, and that the latter must be depleted of CO gas. Building on previous studies, we propose a schematic view of the system describing the dust and gas structure around 49 ceti and hypothetic scenarios for the gas nature and origin.