We report results of a direct imaging survey for giant planets around 80 members of the β Pic, TW Hya, Tucana-Horologium, AB Dor, and Hercules-Lyra moving groups, observed as part of the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign. For this sample, we obtained median contrasts of ∆H=13.9 mag at 1" in combined CH 4 narrowband ADI+SDI 0 mode and median contrasts of ∆H=15.1 mag at 2" in H-band ADI mode. We found numerous (>70) candidate companions in our survey images. Some of these candidates were rejected as common-proper motion companions using archival data; we reobserved with NICI all other candidates that lay within 400 AU of the star and were not in dense stellar fields. The vast majority of candidate companions were confirmed as background objects from archival observations and/or dedicated NICI campaign followup. Four comoving companions of brown dwarf or stellar mass were discovered in this moving group sample: PZ Tel B (36±6 M Jup , 16.4±1.0 AU, Biller et al. 2010) , CD -35 2722B (31±8 M Jup , 67±4 AU, Wahhaj et al. 2011), HD 12894B (0.46±0.08 M ⊙ , 15.7±1.0 AU), and BD+07 1919C (0.20±0.03 M ⊙ , 12.5±1.4 AU). From a Bayesian analysis of the achieved H band ADI and ASDI contrasts, using power-law models of planet distributions and hot-start evolutionary models, we restrict the frequency of 1-20 M Jup companions at semi-major axes from 10-150 AU to <18% at a 95.4% confidence level using DUSTY models and to <6% at a 95.4% using COND models. Our results strongly constrain the frequency of planets within semi-major axes of 50 AU as well. We restrict the frequency of 1-20 M Jup companions at semi-major axes from 10-50 AU to <21% at a 95.4% confidence level using DUSTY models and to <7% at a 95.4% using COND models. This survey is the deepest search to date for giant planets around young moving group stars.

A method based on measurements of dissolved molecular nitrogen, molecular oxygen, and argon can distingish biological from physical contributions to oxygen supersaturation in the ocean. The derived values of biological O(2) production can be used as a check on estimates of total organic productivity measured by instantaneous rates of carbon-14 assimilation. Application to the shallow summer O(2) maxima in the North Pacific gyres shows that about 72% of the O(2) supersaturation maximum at 28 degrees N and about 86% of the maximum at 40 degrees N are due to net photosynthetic production.

We describe Cornell's near-infrared camera system PHARO (Palomar High Angular Resolution Observer) built for use with the JPL Palomar Adaptive Optics System on the 5 m Hale telescope. PHARO uses a HgCdTe HAWAII detector for observations between 1 and 2.5 mm wavelength. An all-reflecting 1024 # 1024 optical system provides diffraction-limited images at two scales, 25 and 40 mas pixel Ϫ1 , plus a pupil imaging mode. PHARO also has a coronagraphic imaging capability and a long-slit grism spectroscopy mode at resolving power ≈1500. The instrument has been in use with the AO system at Palomar since early 1998.

When viewed in optical starlight scattered by dust, the nearly edge-on debris disk surrounding the A5V star beta Pictoris (distance 19.3 pc; ref. 1) extends farther than 1,450 au from the star. Its large-scale complexity has been well characterized, but the detailed structure of the disk's central approximately 200-au region has remained elusive. This region is of special interest, because planets may have formed there during the star's 10-20-million-year lifetime, perhaps resulting in both the observed tilt of 4.6 degrees relative to the large-scale main disk and the partial clearing of the innermost dust. A peculiarity of the central disk (also possibly related to the presence of planets) is the asymmetry in the brightness of the 'wings', in which the southwestern wing is brighter and more extended at 12 microm than the northeastern wing. Here we present thermal infrared images of the central disk that imply that the brightness asymmetry results from the presence of a bright clump composed of particles that may differ in size from dust elsewhere in the disk. We suggest that this clump results from the collisional grinding of resonantly trapped planetesimals or the cataclysmic break-up of a planetesimal.