Friday, July 5 - Session 3 - 10:30

The Eddington Mission

F Favata1, I.W. Roxburgh2,3
1 Astrophysics Division, European Space Agency, PO Box 299, 2200 AG, Nordwijk, The Netherlands.
2 Astronomy Unit, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
3 LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Place Jules Janssen, 92195, Meudon, France

 

Eddington is a high precision photometric mission being developed within the framework of the European Space Agency's scientific programme and dedicated to asterseismology and planet finding. In its present design it will consist of 4 x 0.6m aperture wide field Schmidt cameras and will be placed at the L2 point. Launch could be in 2007. In its asteroseismology mode Eddington will spend intervals of 1 to 2 months on up to 24 individual target fields, observing 1000's of stars across the H-R diagram, including clusters and old population II stars, determing oscillation frequencies to an accuracy of 0.3 Hz. In its planet finding mode it will spend 3 years on a single target field permitting the observation of 100,000 stars, searching for planetary transits and determining the oscillation frequencies of the stars.
The (mainly) French pioneer mini-satellite COROT, with a telescope of aperture 28cm, is scheduled for launch in 2005 and will likewise be dedicated to asterosesimology and planet finding, COROT will provide valuable data to help maximise the scientific return from Eddington.

 
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