High-precision characterizations of K2 and TESS planet candidates from the KESPRINT consortium: Outlook for PLATO

The European-led KESPRINT consortium consists of over 50 scientists and has become a major player in the ground-based follow-up of planet candidates discovered by the K2 and TESS space missions, leading in many cases  to their verification as planets and their state-of-the art characterization. This effort is mainly based on planet-mass measurements from RV observations, but also on high-resolution imaging and time-series photometry, as well as on detailed analyses of the host stars. KESPRINT also runs its own planet detection pipeline which permits the detection of candidates independently from the official mission-releases, thereby also building up expertise in the evaluation and modelling of marginal detections.

The success of KESPRINT stems from the close collaboration between its working groups, bringing together a wide range of expertise, and from the organized allocation of follow-up resources, providing an approach which can be applied to a mission like PLATO. In this talk the contribution of KESPRINT to the field will be reviewed, with particular focus on planets and systems which might be similar to those of interest for the PLATO mission. We pay attention to the issues arising for the characterization of exoplanets due to the available telescope time being distributed across independent teams with sometimes short allocations. We will also count about our experiences from organizing such a large team. These have been ingested into a recently revised version of our internal ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, which might also be useful to other collaborations in the field