2001ApJ...560L.181K

We present the first millimeter-wave aperture synthesis map of dust around a main-sequence star. A 3" resolution image of 1.3 mm continuum emission from Vega reveals a clump of emission 12" from the star at a position angle (P.A.) of 45°, consistent with the location of maximum 850 µm emission in a lower resolution James Clerk Maxwell Telescope/Submillimeter Common-User Bolometric Array (SCUBA) map. The flux density is 4.0±0.9 mJy. Adjacent 1.3 mm peaks with flux densities of 3.4±1.0 and 2.8±0.9 mJy are located 14" and 13" from the star at P.A.'s of 67° and 18°, respectively. An arclike bridge connects the two strongest peaks. There is an additional 2.4±0.8 mJy peak to the southwest, 11" from the star at P.A.=215°, and a marginal detection, 1.4±0.5 mJy, at the stellar position, consistent with photospheric emission. An extrapolation from the 850 µm flux, assuming F_1.3–0.85mm∝λ^–2.8, agrees well with the total detected flux for Vega at 1.3 mm and implies a dust emissivity index β of 0.8 We conclude that we have detected all but a very small fraction of the dust imaged by SCUBA in our aperture synthesis map and that these grains are largely confined to segments of a ring of radius 95 AU.