SPOTS: Search for Planets Of Two Stars - A Direct Imaging Survey for Exoplanets in Binary Systems

The Subaru High-contrast Coronagraphic Imager for Adaptive Optics (HiCIAO) instrument is participating in the planet hunt with its direct imaging survey, the Subaru Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and Disks (SEEDS), from which binary stars are excluded. However, these systems are expected to harbor a population of planets comparable in number to that of single stars, but differing in many aspects, such as the distribution of planet mass, orbital separation, and eccentricity. Measuring these deviations would unlock a wealth of information on the processes by which planets form and evolve, providing much-needed constraints to theory. The logical next step is therefore to complement SEEDS with a sister project focusing on binary stars: SPOTS, a "Search for Planets Of Two Stars". We propose a direct imaging survey for circumbinary planets of very tight binaries and circumstellar planets of wide binaries.