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CO and H3+ in the protoplanetary disk around the star HD141569

Nature volume 418, pages 57–59 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Massive planets have now been found orbiting about 80 stars. A long outstanding question critical to theories of planet formation has been the timescale on which gas-giant planets form; in particular, stars more massive than the Sun may blow away the surrounding gas associated with their formation more quickly than it can be accumulated by the protoplanetary cores1. Evidence for a protoplanet around a Herbig AeBe star (such stars are 2–3 times more massive than the Sun) would constrain the timescale of planet formation. Here we report the detection of CO and H3+ emission from the 5–10-million-year-old Herbig AeBe star HD141569. We interpret the CO data as indicating that the inner disk surrounding the star is past the early phase of accretion and planetesimal formation, and that most of the gas has been cleared out to a distance of more than 17 astronomical units. CO effectively destroys H3+ (ref. 2), so their presence in the same source is surprising. Moreover, H3+ line emission has previously been detected only from the atmospheres of the giant planets in the Solar System3,4. The H3+ and CO may therefore be distributed in the disk at different circumstellar distances, or, alternatively, H3+ may be located in the extended envelope of a protoplanet.

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Figure 1: The CO spectra of HD141569.
Figure 2: Detections and non-detections of H3+ emission.
Figure 3: Speculative illustration showing the inner edge of the CO gas disk and a gas giant protoplanet slightly closer to the central star from which the H3+ may originate.

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Acknowledgements

S.D.B. and T.W.R. were Visiting Astronomers at the Infrared Telescope Facility, which is operated by the University of Hawaii under contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). We thank N. Dello-Russo, M. DiSanti, C. Kulesa, K. Magee-Sauer and M. Mumma for discussions regarding the reduction and analysis of the data.

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  1. University of Notre Dame, Center for Astrophysics, Notre Dame, Indiana, 46556, USA

    Sean D. Brittain & Terrence W. Rettig

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Correspondence to Terrence W. Rettig.

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Brittain, S., Rettig, T. CO and H3+ in the protoplanetary disk around the star HD141569. Nature 418, 57–59 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature00800

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