Modeling the Structure of Protoplanetary Disks in Chameleon II and Taurus Star-forming Regions

Erin Readling
Erin Readling


Erin ’24 is from Davidson, NC and just finished her first year at Wesleyan. Erin plans to double major in Astronomy and Physics with the IDEAS minor. Outside of class, Erin enjoys crocheting, spending time outside, and working at the Costume Shop.

Abstract: Protoplanetary disks are disks of gas and dust that surround newly-formed stars. The structure and evolution of these objects determine how planet formation proceeds; studying how protoplanetary disks vary with age, structure, and region will provide us with clues to the origin and properties of planets around other stars and within our own solar system. The goal of our research was to uniformly model protoplanetary disks in the star-forming regions Chameleon II and Taurus in order to complete a database of disk structure that can be used to study planet formation across star-forming regions. The disks in Chameleon II (n=24) and Taurus (n=49) were imaged using observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at ≈1.33 mm wavelength and the Submillimeter Array (SMA) at .869 mm, respectively, with angular resolution for most disks being approximately .35 arcseconds.  An affine invariant  Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm was used to fit the disks for 8 parameters: flux, characteristic radius, inclination, position angle, and offset position (right ascension and declination), as well as the slope of a power law (gamma1) and exponential tail (gamma2) which describe the flux as a function of radius in the inner and outer disk, respectively. This database will be used to study the conditions that influence planet formation to help us better understand the evolution of planetary systems.

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