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We have used the Submillimeter Array (SMA) to make 1.3 millimeterobservations of the debris disk surrounding HD 15115, an F-type star with aputative membership in the beta Pictoris moving group. This nearly edge-ondebris disk shows an extreme asymmetry in optical scattered light, with anextent almost two times larger to the west of the star than to the east(originally dubbed the "Blue Needle"). The SMA observations reveal resolvedemission that we model as a circumstellar belt of thermal dust emission. Thisbelt extends to a radius of ~110 AU, coincident with the break in the scatteredlight profile convincingly seen on the western side of the disk. This outeredge location is consistent with the presence of an underlying population ofdust-producing planetesimals undergoing a collisional cascade, as hypothesizedin "birth ring" theory. In addition, the millimeter emission shows a ~3 sigmafeature aligned with the asymmetric western extension of the scattered lightdisk. If this millimeter extension is real, then mechanisms for asymmetry thataffect only small grains, such as interactions with interstellar gas, aredisfavored. This tentative feature might be explained by secular perturbationsto grain orbits introduced by neutral gas drag, as previously invoked toexplain asymmetric morphologies of other, similar debris disks.

Resolved Millimeter Emission from the HD 15115 Debris Disk