The PLATO Science Calibration and Validation Targets & their potential for asteroseismology

The PLATO mission (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) has been selected as part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 program for the M3 mission launch currently foreseen in early 2027. The main science goal of PLATO is to detect and characterise extrasolar planets, including terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of their solar-type host stars.

The PLATO core science needs proper scientific calibration which will be achieved by the monitoring of thousands of pre-selected stars. This subset of the PLATO Input Catalogue (PIC) is known as the Science Calibration and Validation Input Catalogue (scvPIC) and includes 38,585 individual targets belonging to six subsamples: binaries (scv1), legacy and benchmark stars (scv2), photometrically stable stars (scv3), red giants (scv4), gamma Doradus stars (scv5), and known transiting brown dwarfs (scv6). 

The scvPIC targets bridge PLATO's Core and Complementary Science and assist to achieve the mission goals of obtaining the radii, masses, and ages of solar-type stars to accuracies of 2%, 4%, and 10%, respectively. Additionally, PLATO L0/L1 data products of scvPIC targets that are not part of the core program will become public to the worldwide community with a timeline yet to be finalised. 

In this talk, we will present the scvPIC, its potential for asteroseismic studies, and its importance for reaching improved input physics for stellar models.