SPHERE high-contrast data with PACO

In particular, Jupiter-like planets (either mature or old) are barely detectable beyond 5 au with indirect techniques and they are still out of the reach of direct imaging techniques.Our study is aimed at a search for exoplanets throughout the whole ESO/VLT-SPHERE archive with an improved and unsupervised data analysis algorithm that could allow us to detect massive giant planets at 5au.

To prepare, test, and optimize our approach, we gathered a sample of 24 solar-type stars observed with SPHERE using angular and spectral differential imaging modes. We used PACO, a recently developed new-generation algorithm that has been shown to outperform classical methods. We also improved the SPHERE pre-reduction pipeline and optimized the outputs of PACO to enhance the detection performance.