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Gender equality reaches the stars, with the dedication of the first 10 telescopes, of 26, of the European satellite Plato to five important scholars of the sky and five to as many scholars. The names were selected and democratically voted on by the members of the vast team, which proposed and is working on the revolutionary satellite, also supported by the Italian Space Agency, with which we want to discover many new planets around other stars. We currently know of more than 5 thousand, discovered, confirmed and continuing to be studied, but there must be many, many more.
In 1995 the first planet outside the solar system
What was a dream for humanity until 1995, that is, knowing whether ours is the only system of planets that revolve around a parent star, is now a cutting-edge research that is also being done a lot in Italy: our Galileo national telescope, in the Canary Islands, is practically dedicated to this study. The discovery of the first planet outside the solar system, 51 Pegasi b precisely in ’95, was European, by the Swiss Mayor and Queloz who received the Nobel Prize for it, and with this we knew for sure that we are not unique in the universe, indeed we are tremendously banal, probably together with billions of other planets around other billions of stars.
You will see a large portion of the sky
The old continent has no intention of losing its leading role in this exciting research and is doing so with a satellite now in orbit, Cheops, and above all with Plato, a revolutionary instrument to which Italian astrophysicists have made a fundamental contribution, starting with a completely innovative optical design. Plato, an acronym that stands for exoPLAnet Transits and Oscillation of stars, has 26 small telescopes of just over 10 centimeters in diameter, one next to the other, equipped with as many cameras.
With this strange and very innovative configuration the result is that of having a very large field, much more than what a one meter telescope could have as one might have thought at the beginning. Basically you see a much larger area of sky. Of course the sensitivity is lower, because less light is collected, but here is the catch, only bright stars are observed and therefore the problem is mitigated. On the other hand, each small telescope of this satellite covers an area of sky equal to 5,200 times the area shown by the full Moon. When a planet passes between us and one of the observed stars we will have the possibility of knowing the size of the planet itself, in addition to the fact that it obviously exists, and the oscillations of the star will give us indications of its mass.
In orbit in 2026
Plato is the third mission of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program of ESA, the European space agency. The Plato satellite will be launched by the European Ariane 6 launcher, which is expected to enter service this year, and is on schedule for the end of 2026. The powerful launcher will put it in the right orbit to reach the L2 Lagrangian point, 1.5 million away kilometers from the Earth: there the forces of attraction of the Sun and Moon are equal and the satellite will be able to remain stable without disturbances for a long time. The entire chain of production, integration and testing of the cameras has been coordinated since 2020 by engineers and scientists from ESA, INAF and ASI. «The optical project of Plato’s telescopes was born in INAF, between Padua, Catania and Brera” recalls Isabella Pagano, director of the Catania Astrophysical Observatory and co-principal investigator of the mission. «During the years of development and implementation, the Inaf team worked side by side with the engineers of Leonardo Florence – in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space (Turin) and the SMEs Media Lario, Hst Srl and Sviluppo Silo – and with the team that manages the project for the Italian Space Agency”.