* Astronomy

Title: A Dusty M5 Binary in the beta Pictoris Moving Group
Author: David R. Rodriguez, B. Zuckerman, Jacqueline K. Faherty, Laura Vican

We report the identification of a new wide separation binary (LDS 5606) in the ~20 Myr-old beta Pic moving group. This M5+M5 pair has a projected separation of 26'', or ~1700 AU at a distance of 65 pc. Both stars host warm circumstellar disks and many strong hydrogen and helium emission lines. Spectroscopic observations reveal signatures of youth for both stars and on-going mass accretion in the primary. The properties of LDS 5606 make it an older analog to the ~8 Myr TWA 30 system, which is also composed of a pair of widely separated mid-M dwarfs, each hosting their own warm circumstellar disks. LDS 5606 joins a rather exclusive club of only 3 other known stellar systems where both members of a binary, far from any molecular cloud, are orbited by detected circumstellar disks.

Read more (1063kb, PDF)