A Search for Exozodiacal Dust and Faint Companions Near Sirius, Procyon, and Altair with the NICMOS Coronagraph

Abstract

We observed Sirius, Altair, and Procyon with the NICMOS Coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope to look for scattered light from exozodiacal dust and faint companions within 10 AU from these stars. We did not achieve enough dynamic range to surpass the upper limits set by IRAS on the amount of exo-zodiacal dust in these systems, but we did set strong upper limits on the presence of nearby late-type and sub-stellar companions.

10 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• The COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment Search for the Cosmic Infrared Background: II. Model of the Interplanetary Dust Cloud
• Mid-infrared Imaging of a Circumstellar Disk Around HR 4796: Mapping the Debris of Planetary Formation
• An 11.6 Micron Keck Search For Exozodiacal Dust

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets
• Imaging planets around nearby white dwarfs
• Sirius B Imaged in the Mid-Infrared: No Evidence for a Remnant Planetary System
• Performance study of ground-based infrared Bracewell interferometers - Application to the detection of exozodiacal dust disks with GENIE
• Notch Filter Masks: Practical Image Masks for Planet-Finding Coronagraphs
• Piercing the Glare: Direct Imaging Search for Planets in the Sirius System
• ADONIS high contrast infrared imaging of Sirius-B
• High contrast imaging with Fizeau interferometry: The case of Altair
• An Imaging Search for Post-Main-Sequence Planets of Sirius B