Program: GS-2014B-Q-2

What does the emission spectrum of a young ~3 Mjup really planet look like? We simply do not know as no such object has ever been directly imaged, but these planets are within our reach. Of all young 3 Mjup planets that one could possibly find today, which one would be the most useful to advance our knowledge? Arguably, it would be one that is bound to a star of known age, distance and metallicity - and thus that can be compared to properly calibrated models - but which has an orbit large enough that it can be studied as an "isolated" object using seeing-limited near-IR spectrographs. This planet should also be brighter than J=21, the current limit for intermediate resolution near-IR spectroscopy. We must make every effort possible to identify such objects, but this has not been done as of today. This is what we propose to do through deep seeing-limited z and J-band imaging of all young (<120 Myr) stars within 70pc of the Sun (219 systems) to identify distant planetary companions through their distinctively red z-J color, the present proposal targets 40 stellar systems in this sample.