From 2008 December to 2012 September, the NICI (Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager at the Gemini-South 8.1-m) Planet-Finding Campaign (Liu et al. 2010) obtained deep, high-contrast AO imaging of a carefully selected sample of over 200 young, nearby stars. In the course of the campaign, we discovered four co-moving brown dwarf companions: PZ Tel B (36±6 M_Jup, 16.4±1.0 AU), CD-35 2722B (31±8 M_Jup, 67±4 AU), HD 1160B (33⁺¹² _-9 M_Jup, 81± AU), and HIP 79797Bb (55⁺²⁰_-19M_Jup, 3 AU from the previously known brown dwarf companion HIP 79797Ba), as well as numerous stellar binaries. Three survey papers have been published to date, covering: 1) high mass stars (Nielsen et al. 2013), 2) debris disk stars (Wahhaj et al. 2013), and 3) stars which are members of nearby young moving groups (Biller et al. 2013). In addition, the Campaign has yielded new orbital constraints for the ~8-10 MJup planet Pic β (Nielsen et al. 2014) and a high precision measurement of the star-disk offset for the well-known disk around HR 4796A (Wahhaj et al. 2014). Here we discuss constraints placed on the distribution of wide giant exoplanets from the NICI Campaign, new substellar companion discoveries, and characterization both of exoplanets and circumstellar disks.

Date Published: 7 August 2014
PDF: 15 pages
Proc. SPIE 9148, Adaptive Optics Systems IV, 91481O (7 August 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2057339

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9148:
Adaptive Optics Systems IV
Enrico Marchetti; Laird M. Close; Jean-Pierre Véran, Editor(s)