We describe the motivation, design, and early results for our 42-night, 125 star Subaru/SCExAO direct imaging survey for planets around accelerating stars. Unlike prior large surveys, ours focuses only on stars showing evidence for an astrometric acceleration plausibly due to the dynamical pull of an unseen planet or brown dwarf. Our program is motivated by results from a recent pilot program that found the first planet jointly discovered from direct imaging and astrometry and resulted in a planet and brown dwarf discovery rate substantially higher than previous unbiased surveys like GPIES. The first preliminary results from our program reveal multiple new companions; discovered planets and brown dwarfs can be further characterized with follow-up data, including higher-resolution spectra. Finally, we describe the critical role this program plays in supporting the Roman Space Telescope Coronagraphic Instrument, providing a currently-missing list of targets suitable for the CGI technological demonstration without which the CGI tech demo risks failure.
NIRCam Coronagraphy was declared ready for science in the early summer 2022. Several impactful science results have since been obtained using the NIRCam coronagraphs, mainly on known exoplanetary systems. In this contribution we give an update on all improvements we have implemented to make this mode more efficient and perform better. With tight timing constraints in commissioning, we focused on the long wavelengths occulter MASK335R. Here we describe how we improved the target acquisition for all five masks, the distortion correction and global alignment, the absolute flux calibration, etc. We also implemented the default dual channel operations mid-Cycle 1 (simultaneous short and long wavelengths). While not trivial, this new capability improves the efficiency and the impact NIRCam Coronagraphy can have in the field of exoplanets. We discuss the current on-sky contrasts and astrometric performances which are now better understood and can be compared to other high contrast facilities. We demonstrate that NIRCam Coronagraphy is transformative in characterizing known objects but also discovering colder and/or more mature exoplanets.
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