Time Domain Coronagraphy: Diagnosing the Stripping of AU Mic's Debris Disk
2019
Boccaletti+ (2015) discovered features moving within the AU Mic debris disk at super-Keplerian tangential velocities in spatially resolved imagery of the AU Mic debris disk. To date, these are the only moving structures seen in spatially resolved imagery of debris disks. The surface brightness, number, morphology, and velocities of these moving features constrains their physical location and mass, and thus are critical quantities needed to constrain the origin of this phenomenon. We propose 7 orbits of HST/STIS time per cycle, for cycles 27,28,29, to determine: a) What is the surface brightness of all features, and how does the surface brightness and morphology of features change over time?; b) What is the detailed vertical motion of features, and does the amplitude of this motion depend on stellocentric separation?; and c) What is the motion of the newly found features (NW-gamma and NW-delta) on the NW-side of the disk? These data will be used to test hypotheses that predict features are caused by the stellar wind expelling grains originating from a parent body that orbits at 8+/-2 au (Sezestre+ 2017) or by interaction between the star's wind and repeated dust avalanche events (Chiang & Fung 2017).
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