›Exoplanets and their host stars

This 3.5 day residential course, held at St Anne’s College in Oxford, is aimed primarily at graduate students studying exoplanets, asteroseismology and/or stellar activity. The programme consists of:

• lectures by leading experts from the UK [and beyond], providing an overview of the key scientific questions addressed by these areas and their mutual synergies
• team projects providing a hands-on introduction to the most important data analysis and modelling techniques using data from state-of-the-art facilities.

Scientific Rationale: We are entering a golden era for exoplanet science and asteroseismology, driven by new satellite and telescope observations of unprecedented quality and scope.  The discovery and characterisation of exoplanets is one of the most active areas in modern astronomy, and has seen tremendous growth in the UK in the past decade. Transiting planets in particular offer unique opportunities to study the interior structures, compositions and atmospheres of a vast range of exoplanets. Understanding stars is clearly of central importance to astrophysics as a whole, but the synergy is particularly potent for exoplanets: in many cases, it is our knowledge of the host star properties which currently limits the detectability and characterization of planets.