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Variability monitoring is our best probe of the time-resolved, 3-dimensional structure of brown dwarf and directly imaged exoplanet atmospheres. Any asymmetric top-of- atmosphere feature on these objects (due e.g. to cloud structure, auroral emission, temperature variation, or composition variation, Apai et al. 2013, Hallinan et al. 2015, Robinson Marley 2014, Tremblin et al. 2016) is detectable via the quasiperiodic photometric variability it produces. Quasiperiodic variability is known to be a persistent feature for L and T type field brown dwarfs. Directly imaged planets occupy the same temperature regime as L and T type brown dwarfs and are likely to be equally variable. The planets HR8799bc possess spectrophotometry which is very similar to that of known variable free-floating young exoplanet analogues, such as PSO J318.5-22, and are thus likely to be similarly variable. Here I present initial results from a multi-epoch SPHERE search for variability in these two planets.

Beth Biller: A search for variability in HR8799bc