| Description |
We propose to measure with PACS and SPIRE the broadband fluxes of two partially overlapping classes of nearby main sequence stars. Each star possesses one or both of the following characteristics: (a) it is a member of a known nearby, young, moving group, and (b) it is known to have orbiting cool dust, but the dust has been seen at only one wavelength in the far-infrared -- either with IRAS at 60 microns or with Spitzer/MIPS at 70 microns or only in the mid-IR with MIPS at 24 microns or with Spitzer/IRS. Therefore both the quantity and temperature of the dust particles are highly uncertain. Scientific motivation for the proposed observations include (1) improvement of our understanding of properties of debris disks at young main sequence stars, (2) provision of a set of relatively bright debris disks for study with ALMA, (3) provision of knowledge of the dust properties for stars with companions, regardless of whether the companion is stellar or planetary; in the case of planetary companions, many of our proposed Herschel target stars will be observed with the extreme adaptive optics systems SPHERE and/or GPI. |
