John H. Debes

How do planets form? What happens to a planetary system when its central star dies? These two questions drive the bulk of my research in Astronomy. I think answering these questions will tell us important things about how many habitable planets reside in our Milky Way and the ultimate fate of the Solar System.

You can contact me by email: "debes" at "stsci.edu", or at my office: (410)338-4782

Check here for the latest news related to my research.

• New Paper! 9.24.2012 The WIRED Survey III: An Infrared Excess around the Eclipsing Post-Common Envelope Binary SDSS J030308.35+005443.7 , accepted to ApJ. This paper reports the remarkable discovery by WISE of a circumbinary dust disk around an eclipsing post-common envelope binary. This system is truly unique and wonderful opportunity to study dust around binary post-main sequence stars.
• New Paper! 9.01.2012 Keck/NIRC2 Imaging of the Warped, Asymmetric Debris Disk around HD 32297 , accepted to ApJ. In this paper, my collaborators and I study the warped debris disk around HD 32297 with ALOCI processed Keck/NIRC data. We recover the disk midplane with high S/N and find that simple scattering models have a hard time reproducing the scattered light we observe. Both scattered light modeling and SED modeling show evidence for multiple debris belts, and the possible signature of an offset. For this paper I was primarily responsible for the scattered light modeling.
• New Paper! 7.01.2012 Detection of Weak Circumstellar Gas around the DAZ White Dwarf WD 1124-293: Evidence for the Accretion of Multiple Asteroids , accepted to ApJ. This paper presents high quality Magellan spectroscopy of the metal-polluted WD WD 1124-293, in which we discover a weak circumstellar absorption line, implying that the metal accretion is consistent with having come from a small disk of sublimated dust. This discovery is important because it directly links metal-polluted white dwarfs to their dusty white dwarf cousins with IR excesses.
• This Website Featured in Optics & Photonics News 5.01.2012 This website was cited in the article "What Makes a Good Website for Scientists?" by Marc Kuchner in Optics & Photonics News. In it, Marc discusses what elements make for a good research website. This website is noted for being "generous and collaborative" by offering tools and slides from talks--click on the Tools Link to see if there's anything useful--don't forget to email me if there's something in particular you'd like to see!
• Debes & Sigurdsson, 2002 reaches 100 citations 2.20.2012 One of my first papers as a graduate student and the subject of my second year project, "Are There Unstable Planetary Systems around White Dwarfs?", has just broken the 100 citation count. My overall H index is 11. Thanks to all the researchers who have read my work and used it as a foundation to discover new things!
• Dead Stars and Doomed Planets article in Astronomy Magazine 2.13.2012 Pick up a copy of the March 2012 issue of Astronomy Magazine to find an article me and Marc Kuchner wrote on the fate of planetary systems during post-main sequence evolution.