Program: GN-2006B-Q-30

We propose to use NIRI with the Altair AO system on the Gemini North telescope to conduct 2nd epoch follow-up observations of two faint companion candidates to two young M stars discovered by us in 2005B. These objects are part of a sample of 37 apparently single, X-ray active, nearby M stars, observed in semesters 2005A and 2005B with NIRI/Altair. X-ray activity comparable to the Pleiades cluster as one of the selection criteria indicates a young population of ages <500Myr. Six of the targets we have discovered to be binaries, an additional five were confirmed. Five of the remaining objects are scheduled to be observed in the 2006A semester in order to clarify the nature of detected companions. The two companion candidates proposed here will complete the follow-up observations of this sample. The companion candidates show delta Ks magnitudes of ~8 and ~12.25, which, if shown to be physical companions, corresponds to objects of ~25 and ~9 Jupiter masses at an age of 500 Myrs, respectively. The proposed second epoch observation will reveal if the relative motion of primary and companion candidate is consistent with a common proper motion pair and therefore a physically bound system. We propose to obtain short H and J high-resolution AO exposures of both objects and deep H and J images of the host of the very faint companion candidate.