Authors: A. Moya, S. Barceló Forteza, A. Bonfanti, S.J.A.J. Salmon, V. Van Grootel, D. Barrado.
Asteroseismology, or the study of stellar quakes as an open door to learn about the stellar structure and evolution, has “suffered” a huge impact during the last decade thanks to space data. MOST, CoRoT, and especially Kepler/K2 space missions have boosted asteroseismology from a promising technique to a real success. Now we can characterize stellar masses, radii, and ages with a precision hardly obtained with other methods. And we are learning about stellar physics now more than in any other moment.
Currently, after the “death” of Kepler/K2, there are only two space missions with asteroseismic potential: TESS – NASA, and CHEOPS – ESA. And it will be like this until the launch of PLATO2.0 – ESA, preview at 2028, that is, around one decade from now. TESS is already in space and it is providing its first datasets. CHEOPS will be launched in a few months. The asteroseismic capabilities of TESS were pointed out in 2016 by Campante et al. Now, and as part of the THOT project, we have shown that CHEOPS has also asteroseismic capabilities. Even more, TESS and CHEOPS are complementary, since CHEOPS can do its best where TESS won’t observe, that is, the ecliptic plane. Currently, there a tens of very interesting exoplanetary systems in this region, and the asteroseismic observables that CHEOPS can provide will improve the precision in our knowledge of the age of the system and the mass and radius of the hosting stars.
Now it is time to learn as much as possible from the data that CHEOPS will provide.
The paper can be found in http://arxiv.org/abs/1811.01573.
Image courtesy of the European Space Agency (ESA)