Context. Over the past decade, large surveys with state-of-the-art planet-finder instruments such as Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch on board Very Large Telescope (SPHERE@VLT), coupled with coronagraphic devices and extreme adaptive optics (AO) systems, have unveiled around 20 planetary mass companions at a semi-major axis greater than 10 astronomical units (au). Since direct imaging is the only detection technique with the ability to probe this outer region of planetary systems, the SPHERE infrared survey for exoplanets (SHINE) was designed and conducted from 2015 to 2021 to study the demographics of such young gas giant planets around 400 young nearby solar-type stars. The analysis of the first part of the survey focused on 150 stars (SHINE F150) was already published in a series of papers in 2021. An additional filler campaign called snapSHINE was conducted to acquire second epoch data, using shallow observations. Aims. In this paper, we present the observing strategy, data quality, and point source analysis of the full SHINE statistical sample as well as snapSHINE. Methods. Both surveys used the SPHERE@VLT instrument with the IRDIS dual band imager in conjunction with the integral field spectrograph (IFS) and the angular differential imaging observing technique. All SHINE data (650 datasets), corresponding to 400 stars, including the targets of the F150 survey, are processed in a uniform manner, with an advanced post-processing algorithm called PACO ASDI. An emphasis is put on the classification and identification of the most promising candidate companions. Results. Compared to the previous early analysis SHINE F150, the use of advanced post-processing techniques significantly improved the contrast detection limits by one or two magnitudes (x3-x6), which will allow us to put even tighter constraints on the radial distribution of young gas giants. This increased sensitivity directly sets SHINE apart as the largest and deepest direct imaging survey ever conducted. We detected and classified more than 3500 physical sources. One additional substellar companion was confirmed during the second phase of the survey (HIP 74865 B) and several new promising candidate companions are awaiting follow-up epoch confirmations.

Context. Since 2019, the direct imaging B-star Exoplanet Abundance STudy (BEAST) at SPHERE@VLT has been scanning the surroundings of young B-type stars in order to ascertain the ultimate frontiers of giant planet formation. Recently, the 17⁺³_-4 Myr HIP 81208 was found to host a close-in (∼50 au) brown dwarf and a wider (∼230 au) late M star around the central 2.6 M_⊙ primary.

Aims. Alongside the continuation of the survey, we are undertaking a complete reanalysis of archival data aimed at improving detection performances so as to uncover additional low-mass companions.

Methods. We present here a new reduction of the observations of HIP 81208 using the patch covariance algorithm (PACO), a recent and powerful algorithm dedicated to processing high-contrast imaging datasets, as well as more classical algorithms and a dedicated point spread function subtraction approach. The combination of different techniques allowed for a reliable extraction of astrometric and photometric parameters.

Results. A previously undetected source was recovered at a short separation from the C component of the system. Proper motion analysis provided robust evidence for the gravitational bond of the object to HIP 81208 C. Orbiting C at a distance of ∼20 au, this 15 M_Jup brown dwarf becomes the fourth object of the hierarchical HIP 81208 system.

Conclusions. Among the several BEAST stars which are being found to host substellar companions, HIP 81208 stands out as a particularly striking system. As the first stellar binary system with substellar companions around each component ever found by direct imaging, it yields exquisite opportunities for thorough formation and dynamical follow-up studies.

Context. Virtually all known exoplanets reside around stars with M < 2.3 M_⊙ either due to the rapid evaporation of the protostellar disks or to selection effects impeding detections around more massive stellar hosts.

Aims. To clarify if this dearth of planets is real or a selection effect, we launched the planet-hunting B-star Exoplanet Abundance STudy (BEAST) survey targeting B stars (M > 2.4 M_⊙) in the young (5-20 Myr) Scorpius-Centaurus association by means of the high-contrast spectro-imager SPHERE at the Very Large Telescope.

Methods. In this paper we present the analysis of high-contrast images of the massive (M - 9 M_⊙) star μ² Sco obtained within BEAST. We carefully examined the properties of this star, combining data from Gaia and from the literature, and used state-of-the-art algorithms for the reduction and analysis of our observations.

Results. Based on kinematic information, we found that μ² Sco is a member of a small group which we label Eastern Lower Scorpius within the Scorpius-Centaurus association. We were thus able to constrain its distance, refining in turn the precision on stellar parameters. Around this star we identify a robustly detected substellar companion (14.4 ± 0.8 M_J)at a projected separation of 290 ± 10 au, and a probable second similar object (18.5 ± 1.5 M_J) at 21 ± 1 au. The planet-to-star mass ratios of these objects are similar to that of Jupiter to the Sun, and the flux they receive from the star is similar to those of Jupiter and Mercury, respectively.

Conclusions. The robust and the probable companions of μ² Sco are naturally added to the giant 10.9 M_J planet recently discovered by BEAST around the binary b Cen system. While these objects are slightly more massive than the deuterium burning limit, their properties are similar to those of giant planets around less massive stars and they are better reproduced by assuming that they formed under a planet-like, rather than a star-like scenario. Irrespective of the (needed) confirmation of the inner companion, μ² Sco is the first star that would end its life as a supernova that hosts such a system. The tentative high frequency of BEAST discoveries is unexpected, and it shows that systems with giant planets or small-mass brown dwarfs can form around B stars. When putting this finding in the context of core accretion and gravitational instability formation scenarios, we conclude that the current modeling of both mechanisms is not able to produce this kind of companion. The completion of BEAST will pave the way for the first time to an extension of these models to intermediate and massive stars.

Aims. In this work, we aim to constrain the masses and separations of potential substellar companions to five accelerating stars (HIP 1481, HIP 88399, HIP 96334, HIP 30314, and HIP 116063) using multiple data sets acquired with different techniques.

Methods. Our targets were originally observed as part of the SPHERE/SHINE survey, and radial velocity (RV) archive data were also available for four of the five objects. No companions were originally detected in any of these data sets, but the presence of significant proper motion anomalies (PMas) for all the stars strongly suggested the presence of a companion. Combining the information from the PMas with the limits derived from the RV and SPHERE data, we were able to put constraints on the characteristics of the unseen companions.

Results. Our analysis led to relatively strong constraints for both HIP 1481 and HIP 88399, narrowing down the companion masses to 2–5 M_Jup and 3–5 M_Jup and separations within 2–15 au and 3–9 au, respectively. Because of the large age uncertainties for HIP 96334, the poor observing conditions for the SPHERE epochs of HIP 30314, and the lack of RV data for HIP 116063, the results for these targets were not as well defined, but we were still able to constrain the properties of the putative companions within a reasonable confidence level.

Conclusions. For all five targets, our analysis reveals that the companions responsible for the PMa signal would be well within reach for future instruments planned for the ELT (e.g., MICADO), which would easily achieve the required contrast and angular resolution. Our results therefore represent yet another confirmation of the power of multi-technique approaches for both the discovery and characterisation of planetary systems.

Context. Direct imaging has made significant progress over the past decade, in part thanks to a new generation of instruments and excellent adaptive optic systems, but also thanks to advanced post-processing techniques. The combination of these two factors allowed the detection of several giant planets with separations as close as 0.2 arcsec with contrasts typically reaching 9-10 magnitudes at nearinfrared wavelengths. Observing strategies and data rates vary depending on the instrument and the wavelength, with L- and M-band observations yielding tens of thousands of images to be combined.

Aims. We present a new approach, tailored for VLT/NaCo observations performed with the Annular Groove Phase Mask (AGPM) coronagraph, but that can be applied to other instruments using similar coronagraphs. Our pipeline aims to improve the post-processing of the observations on two fronts: identifying the location of the star behind the AGPM to better align the science frames and performing frame selection.

Methods. Our method relies on finding the position of the AGPM in the sky frame observations, and correlating it with the circular aperture of the coronagraphic mask. This relationship allows us to retrieve the location of the AGPM in the science frames. We are then able to model the torus shape visible in the sky-subtracted science frames, as a combination of negative and positive 2D Gaussian functions. The model provides additional information that is useful to design our frame selection criteria.

Results. We tested our pipeline on three targets (β Pictoris, R CrA, and HD 34282), two of which have companions at intermediate and close separations, and the third hosts a bright circumstellar disk. We find that the centering of the science frames has a significant impact on the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of the companions. Our results suggest that the best reduction is achieved when performing the principal component analysis centered on the location of the AGPM and derotating the frames centered at the location of the star before collapsing the final datacube. We improved the S/N of companions around β Pictoris and R CrA by 24 +/- 3% and 117 +/- 11% respectively, compared to other state-of-the-art reductions. We find that the companion position for all the centering strategies are consistent within 3 σ. Finally, we find that even for NaCo observations with tens of thousands of frames, frame selection yields just marginal improvement for point sources, but may improve the final images for objects with extended emission such as disks.

Conclusions. We propose a novel approach to identify the location of the star behind a coronagraph even when it cannot easily be determined by other methods. We led a thorough study on the importance of frame selection, concluding that the improvements are marginal in most cases, but may yield better contrast in some specific cases. Our approach can be applied to the wealth of archival NaCo data and, assuming that the field of view includes the edges of the coronagraphic mask, its implementation can be adapted to other instruments with coronagraphs similar to the AGPM used on NaCo (e.g., Keck/NIRC2, LBT/LMIRCam).

We present the multiple stellar systems observed within the SpHere INfrared survey for Exoplanet (SHINE). SHINE searched for sub-stellar companions to young stars using high contrast imaging. Although stars with known stellar companions within the SPHERE field of view (< 5.5 arcsec) were removed from the original target list, we detected additional stellar companions to 78 of the 463 SHINE targets observed so far. Twenty-seven per cent of the systems have three or more components. Given the heterogeneity of the sample in terms of observing conditions and strategy, tailored routines were used for data reduction and analysis, some of which were specifically designed for these datasets. We then combined SPHERE data with literature and archival data, TESS light curves, and Gaia parallaxes and proper motions for an accurate characterisation of the systems. Combining all data, we were able to constrain the orbits of 25 systems. We carefully assessed the completeness of our sample for separations between 50–500 mas (corresponding to periods of a few years to a few decades), taking into account the initial selection biases and recovering part of the systems excluded from the original list due to their multiplicity. This allowed us to compare the binary frequency for our sample with previous studies and highlight interesting trends in the mass ratio and period distribution. We also found that, when such an estimate was possible, the values of the masses derived from dynamical arguments were in good agreement with the model predictions. Stellar and orbital spins appear fairly well aligned for the 12 stars that have enough data, which favours a disk fragmentation origin. Our results highlight the importance of combining different techniques when tackling complex problems such as the formation of binaries and show how large samples can be useful for more than one purpose.

Planet formation occurs around a wide range of stellar masses and stellar system architectures¹. An improved understanding of the formation process can be achieved by studying it across the full parameter space, particularly towards the extremes. Earlier studies of planets in close-in orbits around high-mass stars have revealed an increase in giant planet frequency with increasing stellar mass² until a turnover point at 1.9 solar masses (M_⊙), above which the frequency rapidly decreases³. This could potentially imply that planet formation is impeded around more massive stars, and that giant planets around stars exceeding 3 M_⊙ may be rare or non-existent. However, the methods used to detect planets in small orbits are insensitive to planets in wide orbits. Here we demonstrate the existence of a planet at 560 times the Sun–Earth distance from the 6- to 10-M_⊙ binary b Centauri through direct imaging. The planet-to-star mass ratio of 0.10–0.17% is similar to the Jupiter–Sun ratio, but the separation of the detected planet is about 100 times wider than that of Jupiter. Our results show that planets can reside in much more massive stellar systems than what would be expected from extrapolation of previous results. The planet is unlikely to have formed in situ through the conventional core accretion mechanism⁴, but might have formed elsewhere and arrived to its present location through dynamical interactions, or might have formed via gravitational instability.

The past decade has seen increasing efforts in detecting and characterising exoplanets using high-contrast imaging in the near- and mid-infrared, which is the optimal wavelength domain for studying old, cold planets. In this work, we present deep adaptive optics imaging observations of the nearby Sun-like star E Ind A with the NaCo (L ') and NEAR (10-12.5 microns) instruments at VLT in an attempt to directly detect its planetary companion, whose presence has been indicated from radial velocity (RV) and astrometric trends. We derive brightness limits from the non-detection of the companion with both instruments and interpret the corresponding sensitivity in mass based on both cloudy and cloud-free atmospheric and evolutionary models. For an assumed age of 5 Gyr for the system, we get detectable mass limits as low as 4.4 M-J in NaCo L ' and 8.2 M-J in NEAR bands at 1.5 ' ' from the central star. If the age assumed is 1 Gyr, we reach even lower mass limits of 1.7 M-J in NaCo L ' and 3.5 M-J in NEAR bands at the same separation. However, based on the dynamical mass estimate (3.25 M-J) and ephemerides from astrometry and RV, we find that the non-detection of the planet in these observations puts a constraint of 2 Gyr on the lower age limit of the system. NaCo offers the highest sensitivity to the planetary companion in these observations, but the combination with the NEAR wavelength range adds a considerable degree of robustness against uncertainties in the atmospheric models. This underlines the benefits of including a broad set of wavelengths for the detection and characterisation of exoplanets in direct imaging studies.

Context. Sirius-like systems are relatively wide binaries with a separation from a few to hundreds of au; they are composed of a white dwarf (WD) and a companion of a spectral type earlier than M0. Here we consider main sequence (MS) companions, where the WD progenitor evolves in isolation, but its wind during the former asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase pollutes the companion surface and transfers some angular momentum. They are rich laboratories to constrain stellar models and binary evolution.

Aims. Within the SpHere INfrared survey for Exoplanet survey that uses the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope, our goal is to acquire high contrast multi-epoch observations of three Sirius-like systems, HD 2133, HD 114174, and CD-56 7708 and to combine this data with archive high resolution spectra of the primaries, TESS archive, and literature data.

Methods. These WDs are easy targets for SPHERE and were used as spectrophotometric standards. We performed very accurate abundance analyses for the MS stars using methods considered for solar analogs. Whenever possible, WD parameters and orbits were obtained using Monte Carlo Markov chain methods.

Results. We found brighter J and K magnitudes for HD 114174B than obtained previously and extended the photometry down to 0.95 μm. Our new data indicate a higher temperature and then shorter cooling age (5.57 ± 0.02 Gyr) and larger mass (0.75 ± 0.03 M_⊙) for this WD than previously assumed. Together with the oldest age for the MS star connected to the use of the Gaia DR2 distance, this solved the discrepancy previously found with the age of the MS star. The two other WDs are less massive, indicating progenitors of ∼1.3 M_⊙ and 1.5 − 1.8 M_⊙ for HD 2133B and CD-56 7708B, respectively. In spite of the rather long periods, we were able to derive useful constraints on the orbit for HD 114174 and CD-56 7708. They are both seen close to edge-on, which is in agreement with the inclination of the MS stars that are obtained coupling the rotational periods, stellar radii, and the projected rotational velocity from spectroscopy. The composition of the MS stars agrees fairly well with expectations from pollution by the AGB progenitors of the WDs: HD 2133A has a small enrichment of n-capture elements, which is as expected for pollution by an AGB star with an initial mass < 1.5 M_⊙; CD-56 7708A is a previously unrecognized mild Ba-star, which is also expected due to pollution by an AGB star with an initial mass in the range of 1.5 − 3.0 M_⊙; and HD 114174 has a very moderate excess of n-capture elements, which is in agreement with the expectation for a massive AGB star to have an initial mass > 3.0 M_⊙.

Conclusions. On the other hand, none of these stars show the excesses of C that are expected to go along with those of n-capture elements. This might be related to the fact that these stars are at the edges of the mass range where we expect nucleosynthesis related to thermal pulses. More work, both theoretical and observational, is required to better understand this issue.

Recent observations of resolved cold debris discs at tens of au have revealed that gaps could be a common feature in these Kuiper-belt analogues. Such gaps could be evidence for the presence of planets within the gaps or closer in near the edges of the disc. We present SPHERE observations of HD 92945 and HD 107146, two systems with detected gaps. We constrained the mass of possible companions responsible for the gap to 1–2 M_Jup for planets located inside the gap and to less than 5 M_Jup for separations down to 20 au from the host star. These limits allow us to exclude some of the possible configurations of the planetary systems proposed to explain the shape of the discs around these two stars. In order to put tighter limits on the mass at very short separations from the star, where direct-imaging data are less effective, we also combined our data with astrometric measurements from Hipparcos and Gaia and radial-velocity measurements. We were able to limit the separation and the mass of the companion potentially responsible for the proper-motion anomaly of HD 107146 to values of 2–7 au and 2–5 M_Jup, respectively.