The composition of debris around HD 12039: water from asteroids?

Greaves, Jane; Fraser, Helen; Lisse, Casey and Wyatt, Mark (2007). The composition of debris around HD 12039: water from asteroids? In Spitzer Proposal Spitzer Proposal ID #40310.

URL: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007sptz.prop40310G

Abstract

A small number of nearby Sun-like stars possess warm dust belts, made from the debris of collisions within an analogue to the Sun's Asteroid Belt. Our analysis shows that the debris around the 30 Myr-old star HD 12039 could result from a *single* event, the breakup of a planetesimal ~100 km in size. This offers a unique opportunity to study the ejecta, and compare the composition to that of Solar System asteroids - in particular, the ejecta of comet 9P/Tempel 1 observed by Spitzer in the Deep Impact experiment. We wish to determine the derbis composition around HD 12039 and see what it would contribute if added to a growing terrestrial planet - in particular, whether asteroidal water could add to oceans of an `exo-Earth'.