International Profile

The Solar and Stellar Physics group plays a leading international role in a wide range of missions.

  • The Birmingham Solar-Oscillations Network (BiSON): The groups runs its own ground-based helioseismic network coordinated by Steven Hale, which provides unique data of unprecedented quality which now stretch over four 11-year activity cycles.
  • The NASA Kepler Mission: The group has leadership positions in the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium (KASC), which comprises more than 500 scientists working on the asteroseismic exploitation of data from Kepler and K2. Bill Chaplin is on the KASC board (the Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation steering committee), the KASC Steering Committee and leads the working group on solar-type stars, and coordinates group working on exoplanet host stars.
  • The NASA TESS Mission: The group has leadership positions in the TESS Asteroseismic Science Consortium (TASC) which will oversee the asteroseismic analysis of TESS data. Bill Chaplin is on the TASC Board, and also co-leads the working groups on exoplanets hosts and solar-type stars.
  • The APOKASC Consortium: A collaboration between the APO Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) high-resolution infrared spectroscopy survey (part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS) and KASC: Yvonne Elsworth is on the board of APOKASC.
  • The ESA PLATO Mission: The group leads on the preparation and development of analysis methods for extracting asteroseismic parameters and seismic diagnostics for evolved stars in the PLATO Stellar Science side of the PLATO Science Preparation Management. The group is also responsible for delivering several workpackages for the PLATO Data Centre. [Group members with roles are Bill Chaplin and Guy Davies.]
  • The SPECULOOS Consortium: The consortium searches for Earth-size planets with equilibrium temperature similar to Earth, orbiting nearby very low mass stars. The consortium has four telescopes in Chile, one in the Canary Islands and one in Mexico. All are robotic 1m diameter telescopes. [Group members with roles are Amaury Triaud.]
  • The ASTEP telescope: This is a telescope located at Concordia Research Station, on Dome C, within Antarctica. This telescope is mainly used to confirm long period transiting planets, using the long Austral polar nights. [Group members with roles are Amaury Triaud].