English

The all-sky PLATO input catalogue

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2021-09-15 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

Context. The ESA PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission will search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars. Because of telemetry limitations, PLATO targets need to be pre-selected. Aims. In this paper, we present an all sky catalogue that will be fundamental to selecting the best PLATO fields and the most promising target stars, deriving their basic parameters, analysing the instrumental performances, and then planing and optimising follow-up observations. This catalogue also represents a valuable resource for the general definition of stellar samples optimised for the search of transiting planets. Methods. We used Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) astrometry and photometry and 3D maps of the local interstellar medium to isolate FGK (V\leq13) and M (V\leq16) dwarfs and subgiant stars. Results. We present the first public release of the all-sky PLATO Input Catalogue (asPIC1.1) containing a total of 2 675 539 stars including 2 378 177 FGK dwarfs and subgiants and 297 362 M dwarfs. The median distance in our sample is 428 pc for FGK stars and 146 pc for M dwarfs, respectively. We derived the reddening of our targets and developed an algorithm to estimate stellar fundamental parameters (Teff, radius, mass) from astrometric and photometric measurements. Conclusions. We show that the overall (internal+external) uncertainties on the stellar parameter determined in the present study are \sim230 K (4%) for the effective temperatures, \sim0.1 R_{\odot} (9%) for the stellar radii, and \sim0.1 M_{\odot} (11%) for the stellar mass. We release a special target list containing all known planet hosts cross-matched with our catalogue.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2108.13712,
  title  = {The all-sky PLATO input catalogue},
  author = {M. Montalto and G. Piotto and P. M. Marrese and V. Nascimbeni and L. Prisinzano and V. Granata and S. Marinoni and S. Desidera and S. Ortolani and C. Aerts and E. Alei and G. Altavilla and S. Benatti and A. Börner and J. Cabrera and R. Claudi and M. Deleuil and M. Fabrizio and L. Gizon and M. J. Goupil and A. M. Heras and D. Magrin and L. Malavolta and J. M. Mas-Hesse and I. Pagano and C. Paproth and M. Pertenais and D. Pollacco and R. Ragazzoni and G. Ramsay and H. Rauer and S. Udry},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.13712},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

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