Very Large Telescope Interferometer detects exozodiacal light

This artist's view from an imagined planet around a nearby star shows the brilliant glow of exozodiacal light extending up into the sky and swamping the Milky Way. 

This light is starlight reflected from hot dust created as the result of collisions between asteroids, and the evaporation of comets. 

The presence of such thick dust clouds in the inner regions around some stars may pose an obstacle to the direct imaging of Earth-like planets in the future. 

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

By using the full power of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer an international team of astronomers has discovered exozodiacal light close to the habitable zones around nine nearby stars.

This light is starlight reflected from dust created as the result of collisions between asteroids, and the evaporation of comets.

The presence of such large amounts of dust in the inner regions around some stars may pose an obstacle to the direct imaging of Earth-like planets.

Using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in near-infrared light, the team of astronomers observed 92 nearby stars to probe exozodiacal light from hot dust close to their habitable zones and combined the new data with earlier observations.

Bright exozodiacal light, created by the glowing grains of hot exozodiacal dust, or the reflection of starlight off these grains, was observed around nine of the targeted stars.

From dark clear sites on Earth, zodiacal light looks like a faint diffuse white glow seen in the night sky after the end of twilight, or before dawn.

It is created by sunlight reflected off tiny particles and appears to extend up from the vicinity of the Sun.

This reflected light is not just observed from Earth but can be observed from everywhere in the Solar System.

The glow being observed in this new study is a much more extreme version of the same phenomenon.

While this exozodiacal light, zodiacal light around other star systems, had been previously detected, this is the first large systematic study of this phenomenon around nearby stars.

In contrast to earlier observations the team did not observe dust that will later form into planets, but dust created in collisions between small planets of a few kilometres in size, objects called planetesimals that are similar to the asteroids and comets of the Solar System. Dust of this kind is also the origin of the zodiacal light in the Solar System.

"If we want to study the evolution of Earth-like planets close to the habitable zone, we need to observe the zodiacal dust in this region around other stars," said Steve Ertel, lead author of the paper, from ESO and the University of Grenoble in France.

"Detecting and characterising this kind of dust around other stars is a way to study the architecture and evolution of planetary systems."

Detecting faint dust close to the dazzling central star requires high resolution observations with high contrast.

Interferometry, combining light collected at the exact same time at several different telescopes, performed in infrared light is, so far, the only technique that allows this kind of system to be discovered and studied.

By using the power of the VLTI and pushing the instrument to its limits in terms of accuracy and efficiency, the team was able to reach a performance level about ten times better than other available instruments in the world.

Research paper on exozodiacal light: www.eso.org/public/archives/re… eso1435/eso1435a.pdf 

Complementary research paper on stellar companions: arxiv.org/abs/1409.6105