Astro Seminar by Vito Squicciarini: Direct detection of a rare circumbinary planet

Direct imaging lets us explore the outskirts of planetary systems, placing strong constraints on planet formation models. Blind surveys are the prime means to derive planet occurrence rates, but they require large samples of hundreds of stars. As part of the COBREX project, I revisited hundreds of archival GPI@Gemini South observations with new post-processing tools that push detection sensitivities to lower masses. This effort uncovered a few new companion candidates.

Recently, one of them turned out to be real: a giant planet orbiting the young binary HD 143811, confirmed through a follow-up SPHERE@VLT observation. The planet orbits its two stars at about 60 au and its luminosity points to a mass of roughly 6 Jupiter masses.

The second planet ever found by GPI after the iconic 51 Eridani b, HD 143811 (AB)b stands out as the shortest-period circumbinary planet ever imaged — opening up exciting opportunities for future studies of formation, dynamics, and atmospheric characterization.