Description
It has long been suggested that circumstellar disks surrounding young stars may be the signposts of planets, and even more so since the recent discoveries of embedded substellar companions. According to models, the planet-disk interaction may create large structures, gaps, rings, or spirals in the disk. In that sense, the Herbig star HD 142527 is particularly compelling, as its massive disk displays intriguing asymmetries that suggest the existence of a dynamical peturber of unknown nature. Our goal was to obtain deep thermal images of the close circumstellar environment of HD 142527 to re-image the reported close-in structures (cavity, spiral arms) of the disk and to search for stellar and substellar companions that could be connected to their presence.
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