Thermal infrared images of the remarkable young nearby multiple star HD 98800

We present thermal infrared images of the unusual multiple stellar system HD 98800, which contains two double-star systems (A and B) separated by approximate to 0.8'' in the north/south direction. This system may have formed in a recent burst of star formation in a very low mass cloud in the local solar neighborhood. Our images resolve the A and B components. Both A and B emit roughly equal fluxes at 4.71 mu m, where radiation is primarily photospheric. The northern component (B) is about 3.7 times brighter than the southern component (A) at 9.78 mu m where the radiation is due to thermal emission from dust, showing that 78% of the circumstellar dust in the system resides around component B. The two primary components are nearly identical K5 V pre-main-sequence stars, both with very significant amounts of dust emission. The dust system around the B component may have size, temperature, and possible structure analogous to those of a primitive zodiacal cloud.