@article{090ae5bfb1f142cda6a7080dba375e84,
title = "Extreme variability of the V488 Persei debris disk",
abstract = "V488 Persei is the most extreme debris disk known in terms of the fraction of the stellar luminosity it intercepts and reradiates. The infrared output of its disk is extremely variable, similar in this respect to the most variable disk known previously, that around ID8 in NGC 2547. We show that the variations are likely to be due to collisions of large planetesimals (≳100 km in diameter) in a belt being stirred gravitationally by a planetary or low-mass-brown-dwarf member of a planetary system around the star. The dust being produced by the resulting collisions is falling into the star due to drag by the stellar wind. The indicated planetesimal destruction rate is so high that it is unlikely that the current level of activity can persist for much longer than ∼1000–10,000 yr and it may signal a major realignment of the configuration of the planetary system.",
author = "Rieke, {G. H.} and Su, {K. Y.L.} and Carl Melis and Andr{\'a}s G{\'a}sp{\'a}r",
note = "Funding Information: This work has been supported by NASA Exoplanets Research Program Grant 80NSSC20K0268, and NASA Grants NNX13AD82G, NNX17AF03G, and 80NSSC20K1002. C.M. acknowledges support from NASA ADAP grant 18-ADAP18-0233. We thank Schuyler Wolff for helpful comments and the referee for a speedy and helpful report. The paper is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. This publication also makes use of data products from the NearEarth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology. WISE is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We acknowledge with thanks the variable star observations from the AAVSO International Database and the infrastructure maintained by AAVSO, which were used in this research. We thank Peter Milne for obtaining additional visible photometry; likewise, we have used photometry from the ASAS-SN project, for which we are grateful. The paper also utilizes data collected by the TESS mission. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA{\textquoteright}s Science Mission Directorate. This work also includes results from the European Space Agency (ESA) space mission Gaia. Gaia data are being processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Funding for the DPAC is provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia MultiLateral Agreement (MLA). The Gaia mission website is https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia. The Gaia archive website is https://archives.esac.esa.int/gaia. We also include data from the Herschel mission. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. Finally, we used data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.",
year = "2021",
month = sep,
day = "10",
doi = "10.3847/1538-4357/ac0dc4",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "918",
journal = "Astrophysical Journal",
issn = "0004-637X",
publisher = "IOP Publishing Ltd.",
number = "2",
}