Shades of Black: Searching for Brown Dwarfs & Giant Planets

Abstract

We have searched, so far in vain, for brown dwarfs or giant planets in the vicinity of several nearby stars using cameras built at Universite de Montreal attached to the CFHT Adaptive Optics system. Here, we show how pairs of images taken simultaneously through separate filters on, and off, the 1.6 micron methane absorption band, can be used to completely defeat speckles, the dominant noise source, while revealing cool brown dwarfs and giant planets in high contrast. We achieve the photon shot-noise limit for data taken without a focal plane mask but, so far, have had less success with data where the image is occulted by a mask.