Science

The world's only star catalog provided by the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Science

By • December 23, 2021 - 12:30

The SWEET-Cat catalog allows the community to query homogeneous and high-precision parameters of more than nine hundred stars with exoplanets

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Map of the entire sky (Northern and Southern hemispheres) with the position of stars with planets in the SWEET-Cat catalogue. Yellow balls represent non-homogeneous parameters, while blue ones are homogeneous parameters. (Credit: Sérgio Sousa (IA & UPorto))

Accurately characterizing stars is crucial to discovering and characterizing the exoplanets that orbit them. High-precision stellar parameters can help, for example, in distinguishing between the discovery of Neptune-like planets or planets similar to our own Earth. It was with this intention that researchers at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Science (IAstro) created the SWEET-Cat catalogue.

Sérgio Sousa (Iastro & University of Porto), the first author of the article that presents the catalog SWEET-Cat 2.0, explains that "the exoplanet catalogs most used by the scientific community gather stellar parameters that come from various sources and derived by different methods, thus losing some consistency in the comparison between different planetary systems".

SWEET-Cat is, in this sense, a unique catalog in the world, as it contains, for a list of stars with planets that is constantly updated, stellar parameters that were always derived with the same method.

Vardan Adibekyan (Iastro & Physics and Astronomy Department - Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto) adds that, “despite major advances in the area of ​​exoplanets, the accuracy with which we can characterize exoplanets remains dependent on our ability to determine the properties of parent stars. SWEET-Cat takes a decisive step towards the accurate characterization of exoplanet populations by providing precise and homogeneous stellar parameters of stars with orbiting planets, which. Certainly, one day, in these populations there will be an 'Earth 2.0', which our group and the exoplanet research community have long been looking for”.

The SWEET-Cat catalog was originally introduced in 2013 and is now receiving a major update, also featuring the use of parallaxes from the GAIA space mission, from European Space Agency (ESA).

This allowed the team to increase the number of stars by more than 40%, and to determine, with greater precision, their masses and radii. This update was recently published in the magazine. Astronomy & Astrophysics, with the catalog to be kept in Portugal, at IAstro.

“The SWEET-Cat catalog very clearly illustrates the long-term work done by the IA team to develop studies of the relationship between the properties of stars and their planets.” adds Nuno Santos (IAstro & DFA-FCUP), the principal investigator of the IAstro Planetary Systems.

 

Artistic image that illustrates how common planetary systems are in our galaxy, the Milky Way. In this representation, the size of the planets, their orbits and the size of the stars were greatly exaggerated. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

 

Notes:

  • The team consists of: SG Sousa, V. Adibekyan, E. Delgado-Mena, NC Santos, B. Rojas-Ayala, BMTB Soares, H. Legoinha, S. Ulmer-Moll, JD Camacho, SCC Barros, ODS Demangeon, S. Hoyer, G. Israelian, A. Mortier, M. Tsantaki and MA Monteiro.
  • The Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) is the leading institution in the field in Portugal, integrating researchers from the University of Lisbon, University of Coimbra and University of Porto, and encompassing most of the national scientific production in the field. It was rated "Excellent" in the last evaluation of research and development units organized by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). The IA activity is financed by national and international funds, including the FCT/MCES (UIDB/04434/2020 and UIDP/04434/2020).
  • The article “SWEET-Cat 2.0: The Cat just got SWEETer – Higher quality spectra and precise parallaxes from GAIA eDR3” was published today in the magazine Astronomy & Astrophysics, vol. 656 (A53) (DOI: 10.1051 / 0004-6361 / 202141584).

 

 

 



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