Deep imaging survey of the environment of α Centauri. II. CCD imaging with the NTT-SUSI2 camera

Context: Thanks to its proximity, α Centauri is an outstanding target for an imaging search for extrasolar planets.
Aims: We searched for faint comoving companions to α Cen located at angular distances of a few tens of arcseconds, up to 2-3 arcmin.
Methods: We obtained CCD images from the NTT-SUSI2 instrument in the Bessel V, R, I, and Z bands, and archive data from 2MASS.
Results: We present a catalogue of the detected objects inside a 5.5 arcmin box around this star. A total of 4313 sources down to m_V ≈ 24 and m_I ≈ 22 were detected in the SUSI2 images. The infrared photometry of part of these sources has been extracted from the 2MASS images.
Conclusions: .No comoving companion to α Centauri were detected between 100 and 300 AU, down to a maximum mass of ≈15 times Jupiter. We also mostly exclude the presence of a companion more massive than 30 M_J between 50 and 100 AU.

The catalog is only available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/464/373