406 stars observed with GPI
GPI at 2016 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation
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In November 2014 we set out to observe 600 young, nearby stars with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) and the Gemini South telescope. Three years later, the survey has achieved a milestone with more than 400 targets observed.
Each frame in this movie shows an image from GPI. The star itself is partially blocked by a mask known as a coronagraph. Together with adaptive optics correcting for turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere, and advanced image processing, we can see the stellar neighborhood where Jupiter-like exoplanets, brown dwarfs, and circumstellar disks could be present.
406 stars observed with GPI from Franck Marchis on Vimeo.
No instrument is perfect, so every star is surrounded by a residual halo of speckles and noise. But other frames show real astronomical sources. In some frames, the round image of another star is present – a binary companion star or a chance alignment of a distant background star. In others, the faint companions are brown dwarfs or massive exoplanets, up to a million times fainter than their host star. And around several stars, you can see the lines or arcs of disks of planetesimal material, indicating a planetary system still in formation.
Detailed followup observations are needed to determine the nature of each possible companion. That detective work is ongoing, allowing us to continue to explore newly-formed planetary systems within a few hundred light years of our Sun.
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