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Project Progress

Mike Jura has described a method to detect comets around young stars where planets are forming. The basic idea is that the water outgassing from comets is photodissociated into OH. This OH has absorption lines which can be detected from the ground with high spectral resolution near 310 nm. Comets may
be an important source of water on terrestrial planets, and thus these potential observations may help us study the delivery of water to young terrestrial planets. Young solar-type stars with large amounts of dust that may be in the environmental phase described by this model have been identified in the Sco-Cen association by their infrared excess with Spitzer telescope data.