The planets, comets, asteroids... all objects in the Solar system have become from a single disc of matter at the time Sun was a young star. In the recent years it has become possible to take... Show moreThe planets, comets, asteroids... all objects in the Solar system have become from a single disc of matter at the time Sun was a young star. In the recent years it has become possible to take images of such discs elsewhere in our Galaxy, but it soon became clear that each different 'camera' we use tells a different story about the disc. In this thesis, the state-of-the-art telescopes around the globe are used to image the distribution of matter in such discs around young distant stars. We combine different pieces of information together, in a single model, and test this model against images that probe the basic disc properties: its size, mass and shape. These hi-tech snapshots of the childhood of a planetary system show that a disc may extend much further and not be as smooth as previously thought. This thesis concludes that the structure of the disc as a whole cannot be constrained without the interferometric images, and demonstrates that it is essential to combine them with the existing techniques and theory. Show less
