Rationale
PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) is the third medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme. PLATO was adopted by ESA Science Programme Committee in June 2017 and is due to be launched in 2026. Its objective is to find and study a large number of extrasolar planetary systems, with emphasis on the properties of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around solar-like stars. PLATO has also been designed to perform seismology of stars, enabling the precise characterisation of the planet host star, including its age.
The WP12 STEllar SCIence work package (STESCI) plays a key role in reaching the mission’s science goals: its responsibility is to specify the methods for the determination of accurate and precise stellar parameters for all the dwarf and subgiant stars later than spectral type F5 from the photometric light curves obtained from the instrument. In other words, WP12 will be in charge of providing the specifications for the PLATO Data Center (PDC) to deliver seismic spectra (data products DP3), surface rotation and activity indicators (DP4), radii, masses and ages (DP5) for the hundreds of thousands of low-mass stars of the PLATO core programme. In addition, intermediate data products need to be prepared too before launch, and will continue to be provided during the mission operation.
STESCI currently includes over 100 researchers from 11 different countries, across Europe, North America, and South America. Its activities are spread over 53 sub-work packages, which tasks have been defined. However scientific issues remain to be debated in order to ensure optimized determination of stellar parameters with the accuracy required by the mission, yet unreached.
This workshop intend to gather STESCI members, with the aim of discussing and taking decisions about the best scientific options to derive stellar parameters with the uncertainties requested by the PLATO mission.
SOC:
Marie-Jo Goupil (chair, FR)
Aldo Serenelli (co-chair, ES)
Thierry Morel (STAR Institute, BE)
Antonio F. Lanza (IT)
Margarida Cunha (PO)
Joergen Christensen Dalsgaard (DK)
Jérôme Ballot (FR)
Benoît Mosser (FR)
Bill Chaplin (UK)
LOC:
Eva Notario
Noemi Cortes
Constance Imad
Last update on 29 April 2019