A&A 593, A38 (2016) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201628231 & c ESO 2016 Astrophysics SPOTS: The Search for Planets Orbiting Two Stars II. First constraints on the frequency of sub-stellar companions on wide circumbinary orbits M. Bonavita1; 2, S. Desidera2, C. Thalmann3, M. Janson4, A. Vigan5, G. Chauvin6, and J. Lannier6 1 Institute for Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, EH9 3HJ, UK e-mail:
[email protected] 2 INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy 3 Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli Strasse 27, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland 4 Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University, AlbaNova University Center, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden 5 Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille) UMR 7326, 13388 Marseille, France 6 Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, UJF, CNRS, 414 rue de la piscine, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France Received 1 February 2016 / Accepted 12 May 2016 ABSTRACT A large number of direct imaging surveys for exoplanets have been performed in recent years, yielding the first directly imaged planets and providing constraints on the prevalence and distribution of wide planetary systems. However, like most of the radial velocity ones, these generally focus on single stars, hence binaries and higher-order multiples have not been studied to the same level of scrutiny. This motivated the Search for Planets Orbiting Two Stars (SPOTS) survey, which is an ongoing direct imaging study of a large sample of close binaries, started with VLT/NACO and now continuing with VLT/SPHERE.