Direct imaging of exoplanetary systems is a powerful technique that can reveal Jupiter-like planets in wide orbits, can enable detailed characterization of planetary atmospheres, and is a key step toward imaging Earth-like planets. Imaging detections are challenging because of the combined effect of small angular separation and large luminosity contrast between a planet and its host star. High-contrast observations with the Keck and Gemini telescopes have revealed three planets orbiting the star HR 8799, with projected separations of 24, 38, and 68 astronomical units. Multi-epoch data show counter clockwise orbital motion for all three imaged planets. The low luminosity of the companions and the estimated age of the system imply planetary masses between 5 and 13 times that of Jupiter. This system resembles a scaled-up version of the outer portion of our solar system.

The Gemini Planet Imager is a dedicated facility for directly imaging and spectroscopically characterizing extrasolar planets. It combines a very high-order adaptive optics system, a diffractionsuppressing coronagraph, and an integral field spectrograph with low spectral resolution but high spatial resolution. Every aspect of the Gemini Planet Imager has been tuned for maximum sensitivity to faint planets near bright stars. During first-light observations, we achieved an estimated H band Strehl ratio of 0.89 and a 5-σ contrast of 10 6 at 0.75 arcseconds and 10 5 at 0.35 arcseconds. Observations of Beta Pictoris clearly detect the planet, Beta Pictoris b, in a single 60-s exposure with minimal postprocessing. Beta Pictoris b is observed at a separation of 434 ± 6 milliarcseconds (mas) and position angle 211.8 ± 0.5°. Fitting the Keplerian orbit of Beta Pic b using the new position together with previous astrometry gives a factor of 3 improvement in most parameters over previous solutions. The planet orbits at a semimajor axis of 9:0 +0:8 −0:4 AU near the 3:2 resonance with the previously known 6-AU asteroidal belt and is aligned with the inner warped disk. The observations give a 4% probability of a transit of the planet in late 2017.high-contrast imaging | extreme adaptive optics | debris disks D irect imaging is a powerful complement to indirect exoplanet detection techniques. In direct imaging, the planet is spatially resolved from its star, allowing it to be independently studied. This capability opens up new regions of parameter space, including sensitivity to planets at >5 AU. It also allows spectroscopic analysis of the light emitted or reflected by the planet to determine its composition (1, 2) and astrometry to determine the full Keplerian orbital elements (3, 4).Imaging planets is extremely challenging-Jupiter is 10 9 times fainter than our sun in reflected visible light. Younger extrasolar planets are more favorable targets. During their formation, planets are heated by the release of gravitational potential energy. Depending on the exact formation process and initial conditions, a 4-Jupiter mass ðM J Þ planet at an age of 10 million years could have a luminosity between 10 −6 and 2 × 10 −5 L ⊙ (5), but this is still a formidable contrast ratio. To overcome this, astronomers combined large telescopes (to reduce the impact of diffraction), adaptive optics (to correct for phase errors induced by atmospheric turbulence), and sophisticated image processing (6, 7). This recipe in various combinations had achieved several notable successes (8-12). However, the rate of these discoveries remains low (13-15) in part because the number of suitable young stars in the solar neighborhood is low, and for all but the closest stars, such detection is limited to >20 AU, where planets may be relatively rare. To move beyond this limited sample, dedicated instruments are needed that are designed specifically for high-contrast imaging. One such instrument is the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). GPI is a fully optimized high-con...

We present a statistical analysis of the first 300 stars observed by the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey. This subsample includes six detected planets and three brown dwarfs; from these detections and our contrast curves we infer the underlying distributions of substellar companions with respect to their mass, semimajor axis, and host

Breakthrough direct detections of planetary companions orbiting A-type stars confirm the existence of massive planets at relatively large separations, but dedicated surveys are required to estimate the frequency of similar planetary systems. To measure the first estimation of the giant exoplanetary systems frequency at large orbital separation around A-stars, we have conducted a deep-imaging survey of young (8−400 Myr), nearby (19−84 pc) A-and F-stars to search for substellar companions in the ∼10−300 AU range. The sample of 42 stars combines all A-stars observed in previous AO planet search surveys reported in the literature with new AO observations from VLT/NaCo and Gemini/NIRI. It represents an initial subset of the International Deep Planet Survey (IDPS) sample of stars covering M-to B-stars. The data were obtained with diffraction-limited observations in H-and K s -band combined with angular differential imaging to suppress the speckle noise of the central stars, resulting in typical 5σ detection limits in magnitude difference of 12 mag at 1 , 14 mag at 2 and 16 mag at 5 which is sufficient to detect massive planets. A detailed statistical analysis of the survey results is performed using Monte Carlo simulations. Considering the planet detections, we estimate the fraction of A-stars having at least one massive planet (3−14 M Jup ) in the range 5−320 AU to be inside 5.9−18.8% at 68% confidence, assuming a flat distribution for the mass of the planets. By comparison, the brown dwarf (15−75 M Jup ) frequency for the sample is 2.0−8.9% at 68% confidence in the range 5−320 AU. Assuming power law distributions for the mass and semimajor axis of the planet population, the AO data are consistent with a declining number of massive planets with increasing orbital radius which is distinct from the rising slope inferred from radial velocity (RV) surveys around evolved A-stars and suggests that the peak of the massive planet population around A-stars may occur at separations between the ranges probed by existing RV and AO observations. Finally, we report the discovery of three new close M-star companions to HIP 104365 and HIP 42334.

Two hundred and forty-two members of the Praesepe and α Persei clusters have been surveyed with high angular resolution 2.2 µm speckle imaging on the IRTF 3-m, the Hale 5-m, and the Keck 10-m, along with direct imaging using the near-infrared camera (NICMOS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The observed stars range in spectral type from B (~5 M SUN ) to early-M (~0.5 M SUN ), with the majority of the targets more massive than ~0.8 MSUN. The 39 binary and 1 quadruple systems detected encompass separations from 0".053 to 7".28; 28 of the systems are new detections and there are 9 candidate substellar companions. The results of the survey are used to test binary star formation and evolution scenarios and to investigate the effects of companion stars on X-ray emission and stellar rotation. The main results are:• Over the projected separation range of 26-581 AU and magnitude differences of ∆K<4.0 mag (comparable to mass ratios, q=m sec /m prim > 0.25), the companion star fraction (CSF) for α Persei is 0.09 ± 0.03 and for Praesepe is 0.10 ± 0.03. This fraction is consistent with the field G-dwarf value, implying that there is not a systematic decline in multiplicity with age at these separations on timescales of a few x 10 7 yrs. The combination of previous spectroscopic work and the current cluster survey results in a cluster binary separation distribution that peaks at 4 +1 -1.5 AU, a significantly smaller value than the peaks of both the field G-dwarf and the nearby T Tauri distributions. If the field G-dwarf distribution represents a superposition of distributions from the populations that contributed to the field, then the data implies that ~30% of field binaries formed in dark clouds like the nearby T Tauri stars and the remaining ~70% formed in denser regions.• An exploration of the binary star properties reveals a cluster CSF that increases with decreasing target mass and a cluster mass ratio distribution that rises more sharply for higher mass stars, but is independent of binary separation. These observational trends are consistent with several models of capture in small clusters and simulations of accretion following fragmentation in a cluster environment. Other types of capture and fragmentation are either inconsistent with these data or currently lack testable predictions.• Among the cluster A stars, there is a higher fraction of binaries in the subset with X-ray detections, consistent with the hypothesis that lower mass companions are the true source of X-ray emission.

The origins of gas giant planets orbiting close to their host stars ("hot Jupiters") remain a mystery despite more than a quarter-century of study 1 . The atmospheric compositions of these planets are highly sought after to provide insight to their formation location in protoplanetary disks, how they migrated to be so close to their host stars, and the relative role of solid versus gas accretion during their assembly 2 . However, simultaneous, bounded constraints on both carbon and oxygen abundances, which are key for understanding giant planet formation 3,4,5,6 , have been elusive 7,8,9 . Here, we report precise abundance measurements of both water and carbon monoxide in a hot Jupiter atmosphere via ground-based, high resolution spectroscopy. From these constraints on the primary carbon-and oxygenbearing molecules, paired with upper limits on other minor volatile elemental carriers, we are able to derive the atmospheric elemental metal enrichment (metallicity) and the carbonto-oxygen ratio (C/O). The inferred atmospheric metallicity is slightly sub-stellar (-0.48 +0.15 −0.13

With a combination of adaptive optics imaging and a multi-epoch common proper motion search, we have conducted a large volume-limited (D 75 pc) multiplicity survey of Atype stars, sensitive to companions beyond 30 au. The sample for the Volume-limited A-STar (VAST) survey consists of 435 A-type stars: 363 stars were observed with adaptive optics, 228 stars were searched for wide common proper motion companions and 156 stars were measured with both techniques. The projected separation coverage of the VAST survey extends from 30 to 45,000 au. A total of 137 stellar companions were resolved, including 64 new detections from the VAST survey, and the companion star fraction, projected separation distribution and mass ratio distribution were measured. The separation distribution forms a log-normal distribution similar to the solar-type binary distribution, but with a peak shifted to a significantly wider value of 387 +132 −98 au. Integrating the fit to the distribution over the 30 to 10,000 au observed range, the companion star fraction for A-type stars is estimated as 33.8 ± 2.6 per cent. The mass ratio distribution of closer (< 125 au) binaries is distinct from that of wider systems, with a flat distribution for close systems and a distribution that tends towards smaller mass ratios for wider binaries. Combining this result with previous spectroscopic surveys of A-type stars gives an estimate of the total companion star fraction of 68.9 ± 7.0 per cent. The most complete assessment of higher order multiples was estimated from the 156-star subset of the VAST sample with both adaptive optics and common proper motion measurements, combined with a thorough literature search for companions, yielding a lower limit on the frequency of single, binary, triple, quadruple and quintuple A-type star systems of 56.4 +3.8 −4.0 , 32.1 +3.9 −3.5 , 9.0 +2.8 −1.8 , 1.9 +1.8 −0.6 and 0.6 +1.4 −0.2 per cent, respectively.

We present the first results from the polarimetry mode of the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), which uses a new integral field polarimetry architecture to provide high contrast linear polarimetry with minimal systematic biases between the orthogonal polarizations. We describe the design, data reduction methods, and performance of polarimetry with GPI. Point spread function subtraction via differential polarimetry suppresses unpolarized starlight by a factor of over 100, and provides sensitivity to circumstellar dust reaching the photon noise limit for these observations. In the case of the circumstellar disk around HR 4796A, GPI's advanced adaptive optics system reveals the disk clearly even prior to PSF subtraction. In polarized light, the disk is seen all the way in to its semi-minor axis for the first time. The disk exhibits surprisingly strong asymmetry in polarized intensity, with the west side 9 times brighter than the east side despite the fact that the east side is slightly brighter in total intensity. Based on a synthesis of the total and polarized intensities, we now believe that the west side is closer to us, contrary to most prior interpretations. Forward scattering by relatively large silicate dust particles leads to the strong polarized intensity on the west side, and the ring must be slightly optically thick in order to explain the lower brightness in total intensity there. These findings suggest that the ring is geometrically narrow and dynamically cold, perhaps shepherded by larger bodies in the same manner as Saturn's F ring.