Name:	Patel, Rahul
Email:	rahul.patel.1@stonybrook.edu
Institution:	Stony Brook University
Title:	Finding the nearest and faintest warm debris disks with WISE
Topic:	Data Tips and Techniques
Abstract:	The presence of circumstellar dust in the terrestrial planet zone and asteroid belt regions of stars can be ascertained from the excess flux from main sequence stars at mid-infrared wavelengths. Finding dust in these regions is significant as it traces material related to terrestrial planet formation. The WISE All-Sky survey presents an opportunity to extend the population of faint disks to flux levels 100x fainter than disks detected by IRAS. We use the WISE All-Sky Survey data to detect circumstellar debris disks at W3 and W4. In a sample of 8000 main-sequence Hipparcos stars within 75 pc we detect 243 high-confidence (>99.5%) debris disks, 136 of which are new detections at 10-30um, and 126 are new detections at any wavelength. These increase by 52% the number of debris disk detections at 10-30 micron, and by 27% the overall census of debris disks within 75 pc. The new discoveries are mostly around stars that are saturated in the WISE W1 and W2 bands: the direct result of our use of empirical saturation corrections and of our calibration of the stellar photospheric WISE colors. We expect that the accuracy of our saturation corrections and photometric calibrations will not only aid in understanding the evolution of debris disks, but will also benefit future studies using WISE.