Program: GN-2005A-Q-16

Title:The Gemini Deep Planet Survey (GDPS)
PI:Rene Doyon
Co-I(s): Ben Oppenheimer, Francois Rigaut, Patrick Roche, David Lafreni?re, Andrew Digby, James Graham, Ray Jayawardhana, Doug Johnstone, Paul Kalas, Bruce Macintosh, Christian Marois, Daniel Nadeau, Ren? Racine

Abstract

We propose to conduct a deep direct imaging survey to search for planets around young nearby stars using ALTAIR+NIRI and angular differential imaging, which we believe is currently the most powerful technique for planet detection on 8-meter class telescopes. Modelling of debris disks structures, studies of planetary dynamics and RV data suggest a significant population of planets at separations of a few tens to hundreds of AU. However, RV surveys are limited to smaller separations and previous direct imaging surveys have been limited to relatively high mass planets in this region. The ADI technique can achieve a very high contrast at separations 1.5"-10" and is thus very well suited to investigate this region for nearby stars. Our observations should typically reach 2 Mjup at separations of a few tens of AU. This will be the first survey to systematically reach this limit. GDPS will provide strong observational constraints on planet formation models at wide separation.

Publications using this program's data