The PLATO Multiple Star Working Group (MSWG)
The PLATO mission is scheduled for launch in December 2026. It is an ESA M-class mission designed to find small planets around bright stars via the transit technique.
The light curves it obtains will be wonderful for other science goals, among which is the study of binary and multiple stars. We are creating the Multiple Star Working Group (MSWG) to bring together the community to best exploit this unique opportunity.
We will assemble the many science cases, create target lists, and co-ordinate applications for PLATO observations. We include instructions on how to register your interest.
ESA’s mission Plato, PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars, will use its 26 cameras to study terrestrial exoplanets in orbits up to the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The mission will measure the sizes of exoplanets and discover exomoons and rings around them. Plato will also characterise planets’ host stars by studying tiny light variations in the starlight it receives.
John Southworth, Pierre Maxted
Comments: 4 pages. Contribution to the conference “Binary and multiple stars in the era of big surveys,” Litomysl, CZ, September 2024. Accepted for publication in Contributions of the Astronomical Observatory Skalnate Pleso. To join the PLATO MSWG please see this webpage: https://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/jkt/plato/index.html
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2502.07994 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:2502.07994v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2502.07994
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Submission history
From: John Southworth
[v1] Wed, 29 Jan 2025 16:20:41 UTC (47 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07994
Astrobiology,
