PLANETARY DISKS:
A Dusty Business
Alycia J. Weinberger
In 1984, the detection of "excess" infrared emission provided the first signs of dusty disks surrounding main sequence stars similar to our Sun. However, as Weinberger explains in her Perspective, not all stars with excess emission are surrounded by disks. Furthermore, imaging studies show that disks can have very different structures even when the central stars are quite similar.
The author is in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC 20015, USA. E-mail: weinberger{at}dtm.ciw.edu