Stars and planets form from the same initial material and are therefore linked in their chemical composition. In particular, refractory and alpha-process elements are thought to influence planet formation and internal structure. Over the years, several studies have suggested possible connections between stellar chemical abundances and planet occurrence, planetary mass, density, and system architecture. These trends are subtle, however, and require large, homogeneous, high-precision spectroscopic datasets to be tested robustly.
The WEAVE-TwiLight-Survey (WTLS) was designed to help meet this need by targeting bright stars in regions of major relevance to exoplanet science, including the Kepler field, the TESS continuous-viewing zone, and the PLATO long-duration fields. Because such bright stars are sparsely distributed on the sky, conventional multi-object spectroscopic strategies incur substantial overheads when observing these fields. WTLS addresses this by piloting the newly developed WEAVE-Tumble-Less mode, which enables multiple sparse fields to be observed efficiently within a single observing setup.
This talk will outline the motivation for studying star-planet chemical connections, introduce the novel observing mode and survey design, and present the current status of the WEAVE-TwiLight-Survey together with a first look at early data.
The WEAVE-TwiLight-Survey : Characterising Bright Exoplanet Hosts with a Novel Observing Mode
Lundi 27 avril 2026
de
14:00 à
15:00
Conference room, building 17
