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J. P. Lloyd (U. California, Berkeley), M. C. Liu (IFA, U. Hawaii), D. Fischer, J. R. Graham, G. W. Marcy (U. California, Berkeley)
Radial velocity surveys are most sensitive to companions in close orbits, and are unable to solve for orbits that are longer than the time baseline of observations. Direct imaging detection of close companions to stars is limited by the glare of the host star, but adaptive optics is able to provide a large increase in sensitivity to high contrast, close companions to stars, over a complementary phase space to the radial velocity searches.
We have undertaken a survey of nearby stars with the Lick Adaptive Optics system. The survey consists of stars hosting planetary systems, and stars from the precision radial velocity surveys that indicate long period companions. These observations are typically sensitive to objects of substellary luminosity at separations greater than ~ 1 arcsecond. Physical association of companions is determined with second epoch proper motion observations.
This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by the University of California at Santa Cruz under cooperative agreement No. AST-9876783
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jpl@astron.berkeley.edu