Terese Olander (Uppsala University): Characterisation of cool stellar atmospheres for PLATO (6 Month Seminar)

Thursday 24 Oct 2024, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Stockholm

Title: Characterisation of cool stellar atmospheres for PLATO
Speaker: Terese Olander
Affiliation: Uppsala University
Time: Thursday 24th October 2024, 14:00 to 15:00
Location: 101132 Å

Abstract: M dwarfs are the most abundant stars in our galaxy but they are not well studied. This is changing as observational capabilities have improved and M dwarfs have become important targets in the hunt for exoplanets. These cool and small stars are therefore targets in many current and upcoming missions. One such mission is the future ESA telescope PLATO. The aim of PLATO is to find exoplanets using light curves and thousands of M dwarfs are part of the sample. All these M dwarfs need to be accurately characterised.

Obtaining accurate atmospheric parameters for M dwarfs is no easy task as the M dwarf spectrum is complicated. Previous studies show a rather large spread in derived parameters which I will present in this talk. I will also talk about the pipeline which was developed to analyse M dwarf spectra within PLATO. This pipeline provides atmospheric parameters such as Teff, log g, and metallicity, but also provides abundances. However, there is a lack of benchmark stars with abundances which brings me to the last topic of the seminar, obtaining abundances for a set of well known M dwarfs using high resolution near-infrared spectroscopy.