Motto: Round the star in 80 daysSmall telescopes help to confirm and decontaminate transits of planets with periods of 40 to 120 days.
High precision differential photometry of the target star and the nearby stars over a period covering the event - ingress/egress/center - and at least one hour before and after the event in order to well characterise the before/after levels.
The goal is not a full lightcurve, but a detection of the transit event and possibly a confirmation of its expected properties. That means to collect evidence that the transit is occuring with the expected parameters at high confidence levels. That includes distinction from random (noise) and systematic (contaminants, weather photometric stability) errors.
The PLATO space telescopes are designed to find and measure terrestrial planets with orbits typical for the inner solar system. PLATO will go were its precursors CoRoT an Kepler had to stop. It will measure bright stars, as the NASA mission TESS already does, in search for shorter period planets. This provides a unique opportunity to gain experience with small telescopes, an experience that will be needed once PLATO is in orbit.
PLATO has a total light collection power slightly larger than NASA's Kepler. But the innovative optical segmentation concept (distribution of light-collection over 2+24 telescopes) allows ist to be applied to a large number of bright stars and thus, for the first time high accuracy determination of stellar properties including ages and an accurate determination of planetary masses for entire systems and planets in the terretrial regime - an Earth mass in Earth-sized orbit around a solar masss star.
The data obtained will serve the support of TESS and the development of an optimised instrument, the PLATO PlanetValidator, which will be tuned for testing the planet candidates of bright stars. The PlanetValidator will also allow the measurement of the properties of large PLATO-planets with small telescopes.
PLATO's and TESS' return to the bright stars puts small telecopes back into the focus of astronomy. They allow tests of PLATO and TESS transit-signals: are they "true" planets or "fake" signals?
The TOI-candidates (TOI = TESS Object of Interest) have been listed by the NASA-mission TESS and they are part of the TESS TOIS release programme. These candidates are signals the are planet-like according to the quick-look of the TESS-team. Some of the signals detected by TESS are due to known planets discovered by the space missions CoRoT, Kepler, K2, and ground based searches as WASP, HAT, KELT, .... . They will not extra added to the ETD as TESS-candidates, but may appear in the transit prediction ephemerides below, marked with their discovery programme (CoRoT, Kepler, ...).
An explanation of TESS compared to PLATO is available on the PLATO-Consortium-pages.
Dear colleague, you are invited to join the PLATO-Mercury-Test - observation of transit of TOI 1897.01 b on 3rd of June 2023. This is another request for observation of a long period transiting exoplanet issued by the TRESCA / ETD project within PLATO GOP - ground based observation programme. We are going to take advantage of this unique opportunity to acquire a series of measurements of an event of TOI 1897.01 transit today. This is a candidate planet detected by TESS satellite, which data suggest also a second body on the similar orbit around its parent star - the TOI 1897.2. in distance of 1/3 of orbit path, which will be transiting on 21th June, which makes it an interesting object. Not many observers will be able to observe complete transit, but even separate observations of ingress and egress are valuable. Precise transit observations are important to improve and maintain knowledge of planet orbital properties enabling efficient time-management of further ground and space based observations. Such observations are rare and difficult to perform from the ground, but will be playing an important role as follow up of the ESA PLATO mission. The objects and transits: TOI 1897.02 | RE: 03 13 28.90 | DE: +75 16 06.16 | Mv = 10.6 mag | T14 = 6.14 hours | Depth = 5.1 mmag | Ingress: 2023-06-03 17:30 UTC (observable: Asia) Egress: 2023-06-03 23:38 UTC (observable: Near East, Europe) TOI 1897.01 | RE: 03 13 28.90 | DE: +75 16 06.16 | Mv = 10.6 mag | T14 = 6.66 hours | Depth = 65.5 mmag | Ingress: 2023-06-21 15:26 UTC (observable: Central Asia, India, Eastern Asia, Pacific) Egress: 2023-06-21 22:05 UTC (observable: Europe, Near East, Central Asia, India)
Dear colleague, you are invited to join the first PLATO-Mercury-Test - observation of 21 hours long transit of Kepler-1514b from 16th to 17th May. This is another request for observation of a long period transiting exoplanet issued by the TRESCA / ETD project within PLATO GOP - ground based observation programme. We are going to take advantage of this unique opportunity to acquire a long series of measurements of 21hours long transit of Kepler-1514 b on 17th May 2023 0:03 - 17th May 21:22 UT. Thanks to the exceptionally long transit duration closing the full day, there is a unique opportunity even for single observers to capture both ingress and egress on two consecutive nights. Nevertheless, even separate observations of ingress and egress are valuable. Precise transit observations are important to improve and maintain knowledge of planet orbital properties enabling efficient time-management of further ground and space based observations. Such observations are rare and difficult to perform from the ground, but will be playing an important role as follow up of the ESA PLATO mission. The object and transit: Kepler-1514b | RE: 19 30 30.60 | DE: +37 51 36.60 | Mv = 11.8 mag | T14 = 21.327 hours | Depth = 8.4 mmag | Ingress: 2023-05-17 00:03 UTC (observable: Europe, Western Asia) Egress: 2023-05-17 21:22 UTC (observable: Western parts of Europe, North America) For more information please see: PLATO-Mercury-Test request PLATO-Mercury-Test-20230517-Kepler-1514b.pdf
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