The German Research Foundation (DFG) approves the new Research Unit
FOR 2285 "Debris Disks in Planetary Systems"

The Research Unit focuses on debris disks, dusty belts of comets and asteroids around stars. Like planets, these disks are a natural outcome of planet formation processes. They are able to tell us a lot about the history and architecture of planetary systems.

A synthetic scattered-light image of a debris disk, based on theoretical models (Credit: Löhne, AIU/FSU Jena). The observed emission stems from numerous micrometer-sized dust grains generated in collisions of larger bodies.	A cloud of such collisional fragments seen in a laboratory impact experiment (Credit: Blum, IGeP/TU Braunschweig).

The Research Unit is a collaborative effort of the AIU and several other institutes of the University of Jena, Technical University of Braunschweig, University of Kiel, and the Hamburg Observatory. We will employ state-of-the-art theoretical and laboratory methods to deeply analyze a wealth of observational data available and to prepare future observations of debris disks.