PLATO and the search for planets in the habitable zone
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Science
TESS and PLATO at a glance
With the imminent launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), it is useful to remind ourselves of the similarities…
Top scientific requirements
Planet detection and characterisation R-SCI-L0-01 PLATO shall detect and characterise hundreds of planets around dwarf and subgiant stars of spectral…
Derived Scientific Requirements
These requirements provide the specification of the mission capabilities, and are derived from the high-level science requirements. R-SCI-035 The capability…
Wavelength and colour information
R-SCI-290 The payload shall provide high precision photometric time series in the wavelength band of 500 nm to 1000 nm….
Observation gaps
“Gaps” are defined as time during which science observations are suspended while other spacecraft operations are performed. R-SCI-400 During nominal…
Science Objectives
PLATO is a transit survey mission with the goal of detecting and providing bulk characterisation for new planets and planetary…
Planet detection and characterisation of bulk parameters
Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a solar type star in 1995 (Mayor & Queloz 1995), just…
PLATO study planets where they form
A prime goal of PLATO will be to detect a large number of planets, down to the terrestrial regime in…
Habitability of planets around solar-like stars
Habitability is defined as the potential of an environment to sustain life of any kind (e.g. Steele et al. 2006)….
Testing Planet Formation
PLATO will answer fundamental questions about planetary formation such as: What is the bulk density distribution of low-mass, terrestrial planets?…
Science
PLATO will explore the diversity of planetary system by accurately determining their bulk properties, by constraining planet formation models, and…
Multiple Planet Systems
One of the major findings of Kepler is the catalogue of multiple-planet transiting systems (see Lissauer et al. 2014). Multiple systems…
Terrestrial Planets
What can be learned from accurate radii and masses of terrestrial exoplanets, in spite of the limitations in observables compared…
Gas giants and icy planets
PLATO will address the following questions regarding gas and ice planets: Up to which orbital distance do we find inflated…
Planets orbiting intermediate mass stars
It is now well established that planets form within a few million years from the dusty, circumstellar disk of young…
Planets around giant stars
Several ground-based Doppler planet searches target sub-giant and giant stars instead of main-sequence stars. The number of planets known to…
Planets around post-RGB stars
To date not a single bona fide planet has been identified orbiting an isolated white dwarf (e.g. Hogan et al….
Circumbinary planets
Planets that orbit around both components of a stellar binary were suggested as favourable targets for transit surveys (Borucki 1984)…
Evolution of planetary systems
The ability to derive the age of planetary systems is one of the key assets of PLATO. The age of…
Planetary atmospheres
Numerous studies have been published on the use of wavelength-dependent primary transits and secondary eclipses to characterise the atmospheres of…
Characterising stellar-exoplanet environments
Transit observations of exoplanets around bright host stars, together with advanced numerical modelling techniques and known astrophysical parameters (such as…
Detection of rings, moons, Trojans and comets
The combination of high-precision photometry, large number of planets, and well-characterised host stars that will be provided by PLATO will…
Probing stellar structure and evolution by asteroseismology
Asteroseismology is the study of the global oscillations of stars (see Aerts et al. 2010, Chaplin & Miglio 2013). These oscillations…
Stellar parameters as key to exoplanet parameter accuracy
The main focus of the asteroseismology programme of PLATO will be to support exoplanet science by providing: stellar masses with…
Stellar models and evolution
With sufficiently good data, the asteroseismic determination of mass and radius can be essentially independent of stellar models. For other…
Stellar magnetohydrodynamics
All stars rotate and many exhibit complex surface magnetic fields and activity. Coupled with the presence of turbulent convective envelopes…
Complementary Science
In addition to its focus on relatively bright stars, one major advantage of PLATO over the CoRoT and Kepler space missions…
PLATO’s long-term legacy
The PLATO’s catalogue of thousands of characterised planets and between 300,000 and ~1,000,000 high precision stellar light curves (depending on…
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