Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 2: Planets in their Environment

EP 2.8: Hauptvortrag

Dienstag, 27. Februar 2024, 17:00–17:30, ELP 1: HS 1.22

Learning more about planets: What we expect from PLATO — •Heike Rauer — Institut für Planetenforschung, DLR — Freie Universität Berlin

Exoplanet statistics from missions like Kepler/K2 and TESS have revealed a large diversity among extrasolar planets but also showed structure in the distribution of planets like, e.g., the so-called radius valley. While these data already provide significant inputs to planet formation and evolution models, our knowledge on well-known low-mass/small planets is restricted to orbital periods much less than 100 days. Low-mass planets on intermediate orbits remain to be explored. PLATO, the ESA M3 mission, is designed to detect and characterize extrasolar planets by photometric transits with a focus on small planets around bright stars, including terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. With the complement of radial velocity observations from ground, planets will be characterized for their radius, mass, and age with high accuracy. The mission will provide a large-scale catalogue of well-characterized small planets up to intermediate orbital periods. In parallel, PLATO will study (host) stars using asteroseismology, allowing us to determine the stellar properties with high accuracy. The talk will provide an overview of our current knowledge on small exoplanet properties and an outlook to the expected impact from the PLATO mission.

Keywords: extrasolar planets; PLATO mission; planets; transit method