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Motto: Get ready for southern planets in the first PLATO field (LOPS2)

What is PLATO?

PLATO, PLanetery Transits and Oscillations of stars is the European Space Agencys (ESAs) terrrestrial planet finder, designed and built to detect and measure Earth sized planets with Earth mass in in Earth-sized orbit around an other star.

Task

The mission's Ground-based Observation Programme (GOP) currently kindly asks you for test observations to complete the so called "end-to-end test" to make sure everything is ready for flight,

Goal

The test's goal is to take observations and feeding their results (planet candidate checks) into the mission operations. This is done with a small (~20 sources) set of pre-selected known planets and false positives to check different planet-star systems and differen "contamination szenarios" in case of the selected "false planets". A typical "false planet" is a star with a, so-called "background eclipsing binary" that sits within or near the stellar image of the search telescopes with their huge field but low spation resolution cameras.

Role of your observations

So called "small" telescopes, defined here as of aperture between ~20 cm to 99 cm - with there much better spatial resultion, typically 60 to 100 times better than the satellites - help to test the confirmation and decontamination of transit-signals of planet candidates. The test currently helps in the preparation for the PLATO mission. After the launch, on January 21st 2027 this project will support PLATO's planet discoveries.

How to participate and what observations are needed

Select one of the targets in the list below that suits your observation site and avaiable time. We kindly ask for photometric time series - uploaded as usually to VarAstro - of possible of the listed sources (currently known planets and known false postives, so "planet-like" but actully not planetary photometric signals) and all neighbouting stars that may possibli mimick the planetary signatures but cannot be identified with the satellite.

Currently as of May 2026 to Octobre a proposed sources are known planets and known false positives, that are called for observation to test the proper function of the logistics and data transfer of the PLATO ground-based observation progamme (GOP).

What happens to the data?

The data will be used by the GOP to find errors in the procedures and mission operations. They will help to show to ESA that the citizen-contribution fit savely into the mission and what accuracies may be expected for the LOPS2-field. The data will be transfered to the mission under the repsonsibility of the Citizen photometry coordinator, G. Wuchterl who, as part of the mision consortium and core-science team will guarantee the proper aknowledgment of all contributions with his co-authorship rights in the PLATO consortium. He will be repsonsible in the PLATO team and towards the contributing citizen.

Resposibilities

The PLATO GOP is lead by Stéphane Udry, Observatoire de Genève.
PLATO citizen contributions to time critical photometry of PATO planet candidates: Günther Wuchterl, Kuffner observatory
VarAstro implementation: Filip Walter, Stefanik Observatory, Czech Astronomical Society

TOI-201 b TOI-700 b TOI-700 c TOI-481 b TOI-199 b TOI-928 .01 TOI-500 b TOI-153 .01 TOI-258 .01 TOI-276 .01 TOI-746 .01

PLATO's first field, to be observed from March 2027 to March 2029 is on the southern sky, roughly 40° in diameter centered approximately around Canopus or the constellation Pic. Thus declinitions of the stars in this field, call "LOPS-2" reach from about -20° in CMa (a few degrees south of Sirius) to -60° south. You need to access skies significabtkly south of the celestial equator.;

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