IR STIG Seminar, 6 April 2026

A virtual IR STIG seminar on 6 April 2026 at 3:00pm ET features Sebastian Marino Estay of the University of Exeter UK presenting "The ALMA Survey to Resolver exoKuiper Belt Substructures." The event is part of the Community IR STIG seminar series. Marino Estay will outline how planetary systems include belts of minor bodies analogous to the asteroid and Kuiper belts, and how mutual collisions among km-sized planetesimals produce high dust levels that make exoKuiper belts detectable around 30% of nearby stars.

These belts form as a byproduct of planet formation and their distribution is likely shaped by the presence of planets in a similar way to the Asteroid and the Kuiper belts. The talk will give an overview of the study of exoKuiper belts and present main results from the ALMA large program ARKS, which constrained the detailed structure of these belts to learn about how they form in protoplanetary discs and evolve over Gyr timescales.

United Kingdom, Exeter

alma, arks, exokuiper belts, kuiper belt, asteroid belt, planetesimals, protoplanetary discs, planet formation, dust, planetary systems