University of Denver, Department of Physics and Astronomy 2112 E. Wesley Avenue Denver, CO 80208 USA
As one of the NASA Key Projects, our time award dealt with the statistics and properties of cold, circumstellar disks around a magnitude-limited sample of bright stars, analogous to the far infrared excess detected towards Vega. ISOPHOT observations conducted in collaboration with Dana Backman, and more recently with Sergio Fajardo Acosta and Neeharika Thakur, have begun to indicate warm (mid-infrared) excesses in nearly 30 percent of the objects surveyed. Calibration issues remain to be fully resolved, but if these results are verified, the implications for the birth and death of planetary systems are profound. Stellar ages and abundances are being examined in this context. We are grateful for ESA and NASA support of this effort.