Description
Organisers: David Brown, Malcolm Druett, Alex Pietrow, Don Pollacco, Angela Santos, Thomas Wilson
Understanding the formation, evolution, and behavior of our own Star and Solar System in a Stellar or Galactic context requires deeper coordination between solar and solar system investigations and the characterisation of stars and planets across the Milky Way.
The objectives of this session are:
(1) To bridge the gap between the stellar and solar communities, and between the exoplanet and stellar communities by bringing together experts to discuss the latest results in these fields.
(2) To provide a platform for collaborations and dissemination channels between the solar, stellar, planetary and exoplanetary communities.
(3) To provide an update about the PLATO mission (ESAโs next medium-class mission, which will continuously observe over 200,000 FGKM-dwarf stars with high cadence and quality for at least 2 years) and discuss its stellar and planetary characterisation potential.
We particularly encourage applications with relevance to the Sun-as-a-star, discoveries in Stellar physics with relevance to the Sun, advances in exoplanet discovery and characterisation, and Extreme space weather events and habitability such as:
Spatially resolved or Sun-as-a-star observations and models giving insight into mechanisms responsible for signatures in unresolved observations of stars, for example longer-term variations, flares, and other activity, and feature locations on the stellar disk.
Space weather observations and models with applications to understanding the environments and conditions around stars.
The latest findings regarding solar-type stars, including physical modelling, and stellar populations and the insights these can provide regarding behaviours that may occur on our local star and surrounding planetary environments.
Recent observations and modeling related to the spatially resolved images of nearby supergiants. How can the future of spatially resolved stellar observations help us to better understand the Sun?
Transit, radial velocity, and astrometry discovery and characterisation of terrestrial exoplanets particularly related to understanding the formation and evolution of these bodies.
Works related to the preparation and prospects for PLATO With the launch of PLATO in late 2026, this discussion is timely to highlight advances in the mission and galvanise the UK community to take full advantage of the data.
Helioseismology uses the Sun's natural oscillations to infer properties about the Sun and its interior, while asteroseismology uses does the same for other stars. There are clear synergies between Sun-as-a-star helioseismology and asteroseismology in both observations and analysis techniques and thus helio- and asteroseismology are useful tools in studying the solar-stellar connection. In this...
Understanding the variability of stellar XUV irradiances is crucial due to their influence on surrounding planetary environments. The Sun provides the best laboratory for studying irradiance variability, driven by magnetic flux emergence and causing space weather effects. These variations strongly affect Earthโs ionosphere and thermosphere, influencing atmospheric expansion, satellite drag,...
Stellar flares are a common type of stellar activity believed to have a strong influence on space weather. Since stars are too distant to be observed with sufficient spatial resolution as the Sun, studying the Sun provides a bridge to understand what could happen on other stars, especially solar-type stars. To relate the observations of the Sun with those of stars, one needs to use the...
Postflare loops are important components of the standard flare model, and their existence has been suggested even in stellar flares. However, the spatially integrated data of postflare loops have not been fully investigated, and it is not yet clear how postflare loops are observed in stellar cases. To clarify behaviors of postflare loops in spatially integrated data, we performed the...
Granulation in the stellar photosphere is a major limitation in achieving precise radial velocity (RV) measurements. Granulation-induced signals occur on timescales of tens of minutes, with amplitudes of ~1 m/s for Sun-like stars and tens of cm/s for later-type stars. We use synthetic spectra of stellar atmospheres generated by MPS-ATLAS from MURaM simulations of the photosphere, excluding...
Differential rotation is a key driver of magnetic activity and dynamo processes in the Sun and other stars, especially as they differ across the solar layers, but also in active regions. We aim to accurately quantify the velocity at which round $\alpha$-spots traverse the solar disk as a function of their latitude, and compare these rates to those of the quiet Sun and other sunspot types. We...
Almost everything we know about exoplanets comes from light originating from their far more luminous host stars. As a consequence, signatures from stellar surface inhomogeneities can imprint themselves on exoplanet observations; this is especially prevalent at high spectral resolution where even subtle signatures can be decomposed. For Sun-like stars, such inhomogeneities are primarily driven...
Magnetic fields play a key role throughout the lives of planets, shaping their formation and atmospheric escape. At planetary scales, magnetism is driven by the motion of electrically conductive material in their interiors. Therefore, magnetic fields are a unique probe of a planet's interior structure. In our solar system, planetary magnetic fields are signposted by their bright radio...
In recent years supergranulation has emerged as one of the biggest challenges for the detection of Earth-twins in radial velocity (RV) planet searches. Supergranulation introduces RV variations on timescales of 1-2 days with amplitudes of 0.5-1 m/s, considerably larger than the expected 10 cm/s signal from Earth-like planets. I will present new work focused on mitigating the impact of...
The ESA PLATO mission will be launched by the end of 2026 with the goal to detect terrestrial planets in habitable zones of bright, Solar-like stars. Our study assesses PLATOโs capability to discover transiting planets by computing its detection sensitivities. We analyse how these PLATO detection sensitivities vary across F, G, and K-type stars and evaluate the effectiveness of different...
As stars and planets are formed in the same environment, it is conceivable that a fundamental connection exists between the compositions of planets and their host stars. Exploring this relationship offers insights into the intricate history of the systems' formation and evolution. I investigate both the existence and complexity of a systematic relationship between the compositions of host...
During the past years there has been a major paradigm shift in exoplanet science, due to the realisation that small planets come in two distinct flavours, i.e., super-Earth and sub-Neptune planets, separated by a radius valley where planets are rare. I present the latest research from statistical studies of small transiting Kepler and TESS planets. In particular, I show how the location of the...
Active stars can possess surface heterogeneities such as star spots and faculae that are often hidden within atmosphere observations and can thus complicate the interpretation of transmission spectra. When a planet transits a star with surface heterogeneities the reference light source (which is regularly taken from an average of the full stellar disc) may not be representative of the light...
Protoplanetary disks have been found around free-floating objects with masses comparable to those of giant planets. The frequency and properties of these disks around planetary-mass objects are still debated. Here we present ultradeep mid-infrared images for the young cluster IC348, obtained through stacking of time series images from Spitzer. We measure fluxes at 3.6 and 4.5 microns for known...
The University of Manchester Astronomy Society (AstroSoc) has been running for seven years. Established in 2017, it has been a platform for students to engage with astronomy and get hands on with the basics while having fun. As part of its activities, the society organised an observing session of the partial solar eclipse on Saturday 29 March 2025 in person with solar eclipse glasses,...
Following the discovery of the first exoplanets around PSR B1257+12 in 1992 via the pulsar timing method (Wolszczan & Frail, 1992), the detection of 51 Pegasi b in 1995 (Mayor & Queloz, 1995) switched the search for exoplanets to those around sun-like stars in a concrete manner. Via the radial velocity method, astronomers had evidenced the existence of confirmed exoplanets around sun-like...
Time-resolved data is a powerful tool to investigate spatial scales well beyond the range of direct imaging and โusing time to map spaceโ is the only feasible method to study small-scale processes and structures, for a statistically significant numbers of sources. I will present my study of time variability, in the spectroscopy and photometry, of young intermediate-mass stars comprising of...
