The Masses of the Orion Proplyds from Submillimeter Dust Emission

We have imaged the 880 (mu)m continuum emission from the "proplyds" in the center of the Trapezium cluster in Orion using the Submillimeter Array with a beam size of 1"5 FWHM and an rms of 2.7 mJy. Five sources are detected with fluxes in the range 18-38 mJy, which includes dust emission from four proplyds and ionized gas from (theta)1 Ori G. The total masses of the detected proplyds derived from their dust emission range from 1.3 * 10-2 to 2.4 * 10-2 M(circled dot operator), assuming a dust temperature of 20 K and mass opacity of 0.03 cm2 g-1. The 18 other proplyds within the field of view were not formally detected individually, but by combining the fluxes measured at their locations, an average flux of 1.1 mJy was determined for them on a statistical basis, corresponding to a mass of 8 * 10-4 M(circled dot operator). The four detected proplyds have sufficient disk mass bound to their central stars to form planetary systems on the scale of our solar system.