Adaptive Optics Imaging of Massive Planets and Low-Mass Brown Dwarfs:
Data Reduction Techniques and Recent Science Results 

Thayne Currie- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Massive planets (5-10 Mj) and low-mass brown dwarf companions provide
crucial links between the properties of Jupiter-mass planets detected
by transit/radial velocity methods and field brown dwarfs.  In this
talk, I describe the angular differential imaging (ADI) observing
strategy and detail image registration, speckle noise attenuation, and
flux calibration in the ADI/LOCI pipeline used to detect these
planets/brown dwarfs.  Using these techniques, I present new
multi-wavelength imaging and modeling of two systems -- HR 8799 and GJ
758.  Analysis of these data place new constraints on their
atmospheric properties by providing new temperatures estimates and
probing the effect of non-equilibrium chemistry, cloud coverage, and
metallicity.  I argue that the HR 8799 planets represent an example of
extremely efficient core accretion, while the GJ 758 companion
represents the low-mass tail of binary companions formed during
molecular cloud/protostellar disk fragmentation.