#
# Program information file
#
PROGRAM_ID           2024B059
PROGRAM_TITLE        Investigating the origin of the gas in the 49 Ceti debris disk
PROGRAM_INV1         Kadin Worthen
PROGRAM_INV2         Christine Chen
PROGRAM_INV3         Sean Brittain
PROGRAM_INV4         Joan Najita
PROGRAM_INV5         Cicero Lu
PROGRAM_SCICAT       extra-solar planets
PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_BEG
Debris disks are planetary systems that that were thought to be dust dominated and gas poor, where the dust is produced by collisions between minor bodies in the system. In the past 20 years, ~20 debris disks have been revealed to contain molecular CO. The origin of the gas in debris disks, whether it is left over primordial gas from the protoplanetary disk or released from the collisions of icy bodies in the system is an open question. In Cycle 1, astronomers used JWST NIRSpec [R=100] to discover fluorescent CO emission towards the 49 Ceti debris disk as well as potential water and CO2 ice features in the the reflectance spectrum of its dust. Here we propose high spectral resolution iSHELL observations in M-band of the 49 Ceti debris disk to separate and resolve the individual CO lines. We will be able to constrain the gas temperature and the density of the collisional partner [presumably H2] in the disk to determine if the gas is remnant from the protoplanetary disk [high H2 density] or produced from collision between minor bodies [low H2 density]. We also propose SPEX observations to constrain the stellar photosphere in order to accurately characterize the ice features discovered by JWST, since the reflectance spectrum is obtained by dividing the dust spectrum by a model of the stellar spectrum.
PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_END