Context: Direct imaging surveys often produce a large number of candidate companions for the observed stars, not all of which can be followed up on and confirmed or rejected as exoplanets. Aims: We...Show moreContext: Direct imaging surveys often produce a large number of candidate companions for the observed stars, not all of which can be followed up on and confirmed or rejected as exoplanets. Aims: We aim to search for archival data from the Spectro-Polarimetic High contrast imager for Exoplanets REsearch (SPHERE) and assess the nature of the candidate companions identified in the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign in 2013. Methods: We reduce the archival data from SPHERE for 10 NICI targets for which candidate companions were identified, using PynPoint. We extracted the astrometry of point sources in the images and evaluated whether these objects were consistent with either bound orbits or background trajectories. Results: We could rule out 105 out of 130 candidate companions from the NICI campaign as background contaminants. 25 remain ambiguous and 31 new candidates were discovered. Conclusions: Even though we did not detect anything, this study is still enormously important, as wide-orbit companions might be missed otherwiseShow less
