PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars
PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is a space mission proposed in response to the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 announcement of opportunity and selected by ESA for assessment study. Its objective is to detect and characterize exoplanets by means of their transit signature in front of a very large sample of bright stars, and measure the seismic oscillations of the parent stars orbited by these planets in order to understand the properties of the exoplanetary systems. PLATO is the next-generation planet finder, building on the accomplishments of CoRoT and Kepler: it will observe significantly more stars, which will be three magnitudes brighter (hence the precision of the measurements will be correspondingly greater as will be those of post-detection investigations, e.g. spectroscopy, asteroseismology, and eventually imaging), it will be capable of observing significantly smaller exoplanets. Within the PLATO Payload Consortium, INAF-OAPd has the responsibility for the design of the Telescope Optical Units (TOU), and participates to the design of the on-board data processing with the responsibility for the Instrument Control Unit (ICU). INAF-OAPd also contributes to the development of the science case for both planet search and asteroseismology.
People: C. Arcidiacono, A. Baruffolo, S. Benatti, R. Claudi, S. Desidera, M. Dima, D. Fantinel, J. Farinato, D. Magrin, R. Ragazzoni, V. Viotto.
Collaboration: C. Catala (LESIA), PLATO Consortium
Publications: Catala et al. (2008), JPhCs 118,2040