The ISSP project aims at building a new catalog of stellar fundamental parameters, based on interferometric measurements, and complemented by archive data. This unique and homogeneous catalog will also a direct understanding of the parameters of planets orbiting around stars. It will also help to understand the complementarity between direct measurements by interferometry and stellar parameters deduced from seismic data. Moreover, the large coverage of this catalog will allow an extrapolation to much fainter stars thanks to empirical relations like Surface Brightness Color. As such it will cover the fundamental questions of planets around stars and of the distance in the Universe. To avoid any potential bias in these determinations, this survey includes programs on variables stars, like binary systems, fast rotators, and stars surrounded by environments or winds. This will allow to understand the consequences of the activity of stars on their fundamental properties.
This project is based on the installation and operation of a new visible interferometric instrument (SPICA-VIS) on the CHARA Array at Mount Wilson (California), assisted by a near-infrared fringe tracker (SPICA-FT) aiming at pushing the performance for the completion of the survey. The survey benefits from a dedicated access to the CHARA Array thanks to an allocation of 200 nights of observations over the duration of the ERC grant.
Thanks to the unique performance of the instrument in terms of angular resolution and of sensibility, this is a totally unique opportunity to bring, to the worldwide astronomical community, a new vision on the fundamental parameters of stars. This project contributes to the overall progress in the knowledge of the Universe and as such contributes to the progress of the knowledge of the humankind. The bridges between our project and the ESA/PLATO space mission (stars and planets) on one hand, and with the ARAUCARIA project on the other hand for the question of the distance in the Universe, have been strongly reinforced.
