Searching for Previously Unresolved Binaries in DEBRIS Survey Target Stars

APPROXIMATELY twenty five years ago, IRAS discovered a dust disk around Vega–the first disk of its kind ever known. Since then, around twenty dust disks have been imaged, a meager number in a field so crucial to understanding the formation and evolution of stars and planets. To settle this knowledge deficit, the Herschel DEBRIS Key Project proposed to survey–without bias–446 nearby stars in the spectral classes A M for dust disks. It is the first search of its kind since IRAS, i.e. an unbiased survey focused solely on detecting and imaging a large number of debris disks around main sequence stars.