Albanova University Center
Roslagstullsbacken 21
Stockholm
Sweden
Description
This is a PLATO consortium meeting. PLATO is an ESA mission that will monitor relatively nearby stars, searching for tiny, regular dips in brightness as their planets transit in front of them, temporarily blocking out a small fraction of the starlight. When coupled with ground-based radial velocity observations, PLATO's measurements will allow a planet's mass and radius to be calculated, and therefore its density, providing an indication of its composition. The mission will identify and study thousands of exoplanetary systems, with an emphasis on discovering and characterising Earth-sized planets and super-Earths in the habitable zone of their parent star – the distance from the star where liquid surface water could exist.
