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CoRoT
CoRoT (French: Convection, Rotation et Transits planétaires; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly those of large terrestrial size, and to perform asteroseismology by measuring solar-like oscillations in stars. The mission was led by the French Space Agency (CNES) in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners.
Among the notable discoveries was CoRoT-7b, discovered in 2009 which became the first exoplanet shown to have a rock or metal-dominated composition.
CoRoT was launched at 14:28:00 UTC on 27 December 2006, atop a Soyuz 2.1b rocket, reporting first light on 18 January 2007. Subsequently, the probe started to collect science data on 2 February 2007. CoRoT was the first spacecraft dedicated to the detection of transiting extrasolar planets, opening the way for more advanced probes such as Kepler and TESS. It detected its first extrasolar planet, CoRoT-1b, in May 2007, just 3 months after the start of the observations. Mission flight operations were originally scheduled to end 2.5 years from launch but operations were extended to 2013. On 2 November 2012, CoRoT suffered a computer failure that made it impossible to retrieve any data from its telescope. Repair attempts were unsuccessful, so on 24 June 2013 it was announced that CoRoT had been retired and would be decommissioned; lowered in orbit to allow it to burn up in the atmosphere.
The CoRoT optical design minimized stray light coming from the Earth and provided a field of view of 2.7° by 3.05°. The CoRoT optical path consisted of a 27 cm (10.6 in) diameter off-axis afocal telescope housed in a two-stage opaque baffle specifically designed to block sunlight reflected by the Earth and a camera consisting of a dioptric objective and a focal box. Inside the focal box was an array of four CCD detectors protected against radiation by aluminum shielding 10mm thick. The asteroseismology CCDs are defocused by 760μm toward the dioptric objective to avoid saturation of the brightest stars. A prism in front of the planet detection CCDs gives a small spectrum designed to disperse more strongly in the blue wavelengths.
The four CCD detectors are model 4280 CCDs provided by E2V Technologies. These CCDs are frame-transfer, thinned, back-illuminated designs in a 2,048 by 2,048 pixel array. Each pixel is 13.5 μm × 13.5 μm in size which corresponds to an angular pixel size of 2.32 arcsec. The CCDs are cooled to −40 °C (233.2 K; −40.0 °F). These detectors are arranged in a square pattern with two each dedicated to the planetary detection and asteroseismology. The data output stream from the CCDs are connected in two chains. Each chain has one planetary detection CCD and one asteroseismology CCD. The field of view for planetary detection is 3.5°. The satellite, built in the Cannes Mandelieu Space Center, had a launch mass of 630 kg, was 4.10 m long, 1.984 m in diameter and was powered by two solar panels.
The satellite observed perpendicular to its orbital plane, meaning there were no Earth occultations, allowing up to 150 days of continuous observation. These observation sessions, called "Long Runs", allowed detection of smaller and long-period planets. During the remaining 30 days between the two main observation periods, CoRoT observed other patches of sky for a few weeks long "Short Runs", in order to analyze a larger number of stars for the asteroseismic program. After the loss of half the field of view due to failure of Data Processing Unit No. 1 in March 2009, the observation strategy changed to 3 months observing runs, in order to optimize the number of observed stars and detection efficiency.
In order to avoid the Sun entering in its field of view, during the northern summer CoRoT observed in an area around Serpens Cauda, toward the Galactic Center, and during the winter it observed in Monoceros, in the Galactic anticenter. Both these "eyes" of CoRoT have been studied in preliminary observations carried out between 1998 and 2005, allowing the creation of a database, called CoRoTsky, with data about the stars located in these two patches of sky. This allowed selecting the best fields for observation: the exoplanet research program requires a large number of dwarf stars to be monitored, and to avoid giant stars, for which planetary transits are too shallow to be detectable. The asteroseismic program required stars brighter than magnitude 9, and to cover as many different types of stars as possible. In addition, in order to optimize the observations, the fields had to not be too sparse – fewer targets observed – or too crowded – too many stars overlapping. Several fields were observed during the mission:
The spacecraft monitored the brightness of stars over time, searching for the slight dimming that happens in regular intervals when planets transit their host star. In every field, CoRoT recorded the brightness of thousands stars in the V-magnitude range from 11 to 16 for the extrasolar planet study. In fact, stellar targets brighter than 11 saturated the exoplanets CCD detectors, yielding inaccurate data, whilst stars dimmer than 16 do not deliver enough photons to allow planetary detections. CoRoT was sensitive enough to detect rocky planets with a radius two times larger than Earth, orbiting stars brighter than 14; it is also expected to discover new gas giants in the whole magnitude range.
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CoRoT
CoRoT (French: Convection, Rotation et Transits planétaires; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly those of large terrestrial size, and to perform asteroseismology by measuring solar-like oscillations in stars. The mission was led by the French Space Agency (CNES) in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners.
Among the notable discoveries was CoRoT-7b, discovered in 2009 which became the first exoplanet shown to have a rock or metal-dominated composition.
CoRoT was launched at 14:28:00 UTC on 27 December 2006, atop a Soyuz 2.1b rocket, reporting first light on 18 January 2007. Subsequently, the probe started to collect science data on 2 February 2007. CoRoT was the first spacecraft dedicated to the detection of transiting extrasolar planets, opening the way for more advanced probes such as Kepler and TESS. It detected its first extrasolar planet, CoRoT-1b, in May 2007, just 3 months after the start of the observations. Mission flight operations were originally scheduled to end 2.5 years from launch but operations were extended to 2013. On 2 November 2012, CoRoT suffered a computer failure that made it impossible to retrieve any data from its telescope. Repair attempts were unsuccessful, so on 24 June 2013 it was announced that CoRoT had been retired and would be decommissioned; lowered in orbit to allow it to burn up in the atmosphere.
The CoRoT optical design minimized stray light coming from the Earth and provided a field of view of 2.7° by 3.05°. The CoRoT optical path consisted of a 27 cm (10.6 in) diameter off-axis afocal telescope housed in a two-stage opaque baffle specifically designed to block sunlight reflected by the Earth and a camera consisting of a dioptric objective and a focal box. Inside the focal box was an array of four CCD detectors protected against radiation by aluminum shielding 10mm thick. The asteroseismology CCDs are defocused by 760μm toward the dioptric objective to avoid saturation of the brightest stars. A prism in front of the planet detection CCDs gives a small spectrum designed to disperse more strongly in the blue wavelengths.
The four CCD detectors are model 4280 CCDs provided by E2V Technologies. These CCDs are frame-transfer, thinned, back-illuminated designs in a 2,048 by 2,048 pixel array. Each pixel is 13.5 μm × 13.5 μm in size which corresponds to an angular pixel size of 2.32 arcsec. The CCDs are cooled to −40 °C (233.2 K; −40.0 °F). These detectors are arranged in a square pattern with two each dedicated to the planetary detection and asteroseismology. The data output stream from the CCDs are connected in two chains. Each chain has one planetary detection CCD and one asteroseismology CCD. The field of view for planetary detection is 3.5°. The satellite, built in the Cannes Mandelieu Space Center, had a launch mass of 630 kg, was 4.10 m long, 1.984 m in diameter and was powered by two solar panels.
The satellite observed perpendicular to its orbital plane, meaning there were no Earth occultations, allowing up to 150 days of continuous observation. These observation sessions, called "Long Runs", allowed detection of smaller and long-period planets. During the remaining 30 days between the two main observation periods, CoRoT observed other patches of sky for a few weeks long "Short Runs", in order to analyze a larger number of stars for the asteroseismic program. After the loss of half the field of view due to failure of Data Processing Unit No. 1 in March 2009, the observation strategy changed to 3 months observing runs, in order to optimize the number of observed stars and detection efficiency.
In order to avoid the Sun entering in its field of view, during the northern summer CoRoT observed in an area around Serpens Cauda, toward the Galactic Center, and during the winter it observed in Monoceros, in the Galactic anticenter. Both these "eyes" of CoRoT have been studied in preliminary observations carried out between 1998 and 2005, allowing the creation of a database, called CoRoTsky, with data about the stars located in these two patches of sky. This allowed selecting the best fields for observation: the exoplanet research program requires a large number of dwarf stars to be monitored, and to avoid giant stars, for which planetary transits are too shallow to be detectable. The asteroseismic program required stars brighter than magnitude 9, and to cover as many different types of stars as possible. In addition, in order to optimize the observations, the fields had to not be too sparse – fewer targets observed – or too crowded – too many stars overlapping. Several fields were observed during the mission:
The spacecraft monitored the brightness of stars over time, searching for the slight dimming that happens in regular intervals when planets transit their host star. In every field, CoRoT recorded the brightness of thousands stars in the V-magnitude range from 11 to 16 for the extrasolar planet study. In fact, stellar targets brighter than 11 saturated the exoplanets CCD detectors, yielding inaccurate data, whilst stars dimmer than 16 do not deliver enough photons to allow planetary detections. CoRoT was sensitive enough to detect rocky planets with a radius two times larger than Earth, orbiting stars brighter than 14; it is also expected to discover new gas giants in the whole magnitude range.
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