| Description |
Gomez.s Hamburger (GoHam) is a gas rich protoplanetary disk around a pre-main-sequence A star. Recent observations at infrared and millimeter wavelengths have reveal the extraordinary nature of this source: it is seen almost perfectly edge-on, it is massive and therefore intense in the infrared and millimeter: offering the possibility to detect key species (e.g. H2O, High J CO lines), it is large enough to be spatially resolved at most wavelengths, and it is likely in the process of forming planets. Overall, it appears that GoHam is a key object to study the mechanisms that lead to planetary formation, and it has been left behind in the guaranteed time. Here, we propose to observe this object with the three instrument onboard Herschel to complete the data set we have already gathered for this source. The team, composed of experts in molecular astrophysics, disks, radiative transfer, chemistry, and dust properties, will then make best use of these observations to probe the gas temperature, density, velocity and the dust size distribution as a function of the radial and vertical dimension of the disk. Such results are needed, in the end, to constrain the hydrodynamical models of planetary formation, and chemical models explaining the formation of complex molecules. The total requested time for this program is 10 hours. |
