MNRAS 488, 4465–4476 (2019) doi:10.1093/mnras/stz1942 Advance Access publication 2019 July 12
Planetesimals around stars with TESS (PAST) – I. Transient dimming of a binary solar analogue at the end of the planet accretion era Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/488/4/4465/5531782 by California Institute of Technology user on 26 September 2019 E. Gaidos ,1,2‹ T. Jacobs,3 D. LaCourse,4 A. Vanderburg,5 S. Rappaport,6 T. Berger,2,7 L. Pearce,5 A. W. Mann,8 L. Weiss,2,7† B. Fulton,9 A. Behmard ,10 A. W. Howard,9 M. Ansdell,11,12 G. R. Ricker,13 R. K. Vanderspek,13 D. W. Latham,14 S. Seager,13,15,16 J. N. Winn17 and J. M. Jenkins18 1Department of Earth Sciences, University of Hawai’i at Manoa,¯ Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 2Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA 312812 SE 69th Place Bellevue, WA 98006, USA 47507 52nd Place NE Marysville, WA 98270, USA 5Department of Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin, 2515 Speedway, Stop C1400, Austin, TX 78712, USA 6Department of Physics, Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 7Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa,¯ Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 8Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255, USA 9Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 10Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 11Center for Integrative Planetary Science, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 12Department of Astronomy, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 13Department of Physics and Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 14Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 15Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 16Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 17Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA 18NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
Accepted 2019 July 5. Received 2019 July 3; in original form 2019 May 23
ABSTRACT We report detection of quasi-periodic (1.5-d) dimming of HD 240779, the solar-mass primary in a 5 arcsec visual binary (also TIC 284730577), by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. This dimming, as has been shown for other ‘dipper’ stars, is likely due to occultation by circumstellar dust. The barycentric space motion, lithium abundance, rotation, and chromospheric emission of the stars in this system point to an age of ≈125 Myr, and possible membership in the AB Doradus moving group. As such it occupies an important but poorly explored intermediate regime of stars with transient dimming between young stellar objects in star-forming regions and main-sequence stars, and between UX Orionis-type Ae/Be stars and M-type ‘dippers’. HD 240779, but not its companion BD+10 714B, has Wide- field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)-detected excess infrared emission at 12 and 22 μm indicative of circumstellar dust. We propose that infrared emission is produced by collisions of planetesimals during clearing of a residual disc at the end of rocky planet formation, and that quasi-periodic dimming is produced by the rapid disintegration of a 100 km planetesimal near the silicate evaporation radius. Further studies of this and similar systems will illuminate a poorly understood final phase of rocky planet formation like that which produced the inner Solar system. Key words: planet–star interactions – protoplanetary discs – (stars:) binaries – (stars:) cir- cumstellar matter – stars: kinematics and dynamics – (stars:) planetary systems.