We present our search program for substellar companions using high-precision
relative astronomy. Due to its orbital motion around the star, an unseen
substellar companion would produce a periodic “wobble” of
the host star, which is the astrometric signal of the unseen companion. By
measuring the separation between the components of stellar double and triple
systems, we want to measure this astrometric signal of a possible unseen
companion indirectly as a relative and periodic change of these separations.
Using a new observation mode (the “cube-mode”) where the
frames were directly saved in cubes with nearly no loss of time during the
readout, an adaptive optics system to correct for atmospheric noise and an
infrared narrow band filter in the near infrared to suppress differential
chromatic refraction (DCR) effects we achieve for our first target (the double
star HD 19994) a relative precision for the separation measurements of about
100. . . 150μas per epoch. To reach a precision in the μas-regime, we use a statistical approach. We take
several thousand frames per target and epoche and after a verification of a
Gaussian distribution the measurement precision can be calculated as the
standard deviation of our measurements divided by the square root of the number
of Gaussian distributed measurements. Our first observed target is the stellar
binary HD 19994 A & B, where the A component has a known radial
velocity planet candidate.