Debris Disk Database

The debris disk database was initiated to provide a central point of information on stars that may harbour dusty debris disks. The database is comprised of 901 stars which either published or unpublished surveys have claimed to have a debris disk. The database was compiled between 2001-2002 and so does not, at this point in time, include discoveries more recent than 2002. Debris disk candidates have most often been found by searching for infrared emission from the vicinity of nearby main sequence stars that is in excess of the emission expected from the star alone. Several lists of candidates have appeared in the literature since the first discovery of Vega's debris disk in 1984. Most of these lists used the databases produced by the infrared satellite IRAS, although more recently the satellite ISO has been used to discover many disks, some of which are included in this database. Since this database was compiled, several disks have been discovered in ground-based observations of nearby stars (e.g., Wyatt, Dent & Greaves 2003), as well as using the infrared satellite Spitzer which was launched in August 2003, and more candidates have also been found with further analysis of the IRAS database (Rhee et al. 2006).

As well as collating this list of candidates (see input data screen), we have also tested these for "debris disk"-ness. An infrared excess can arise for a number of reasons (e.g., Young Stellar Objects, Giant stars and Be stars may all have a non-debris disk infrared excess), and not all of the surveys were concerned with solely identifying debris disks. Thus we have used the Michigan Spectral Calatolgues and SIMBAD to determine the spectral types of candidate stars (see spectral types screen), and have defined a true debris disk candidate to be a main sequence star (luminosity class V or IV/V) with excess infrared emission. Other designations we use for the cause of the infrared excess are: Be, Unassociated and Other.

To present information about the dust emission, we searched for sources in the IRAS catalogues which are near to the positions of the candidates in the database. As well as providing information on the Spectral Energy Distribution of the dust emission, this has lead to an accurate determination of the likelihood that each star really has an IRAS source associated with it. The IRAS sources identified in the original surveys are occasionally significantly offset from the candidate star, and so are more likely to be associated with another source.

All of this information is summarized on the summary screen, and detailed information about each of these sources can be accessed from this screen. This includes, in some cases, our notes about each source.

Acknowledgements: This database was compiled by Mark Wyatt and Stephen McGill, with the help of Bill Dent and Vivienne Wild.

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