========================================================================= "The Architecture of Planetary Systems Revealed by Debris Disk Imaging" Prof. Paul Kalas University of California, Berkeley, USA When: Friday 4 May 2007 at 1:30pm Where: 2nd Floor Seminar Room Abstract: Over the past three years, observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have tripled the number of dusty debris disks directly imaged in scattered light. Debris disks are the exosolar analogs of our Zodiacal dust cloud and Kuiper Belt, and they reveal the fundamental architecture of an underlying planetary system. I will review the current renaissance in debris disk discoveries that now includes stars of every spectral type. I will focus more closely on how a spectacular ring of material surrounding the bright star Fomalhaut gives evidence for a planetary system. I will also discuss the latest advances in understanding AU Mic, the first debris disk seen around an M dwarf. And finally, I will present our most recent and the most puzzling result, a needle-like disk surrounding the nearby F star HD 15115 (arXiv:0704.0645). Debris disk architectures are now known to be surprisingly diverse, and I will identify new questions for future research. ========================================================================= Paul Kalas obtained his BSc from the Univ. of Michigan at Ann Arbor and his PhD from the Univ. of Hawai at Manoa in 1996. He is currently an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Univ. of California,Berkeley. For more information on Paul you may visit his web page at: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/