Objective
Exoplanet research has experienced enormous growth and is now pushing instrumental limits to find temperate terrestrial planets and precisely characterise their atmospheres. Extreme-precision radial velocity (RV) instruments (e.g. ESPRESSO), offering 10 cm/s stability, and space telescopes (e.g. JWST, Ariel), attaining relative flux uncertainties of 10 ppm are becoming a reality. But there is a shadow of concern hovering over such fantastic performances. The intrinsic variability of the stellar hosts can overwhelm the instrument error to become the dominant uncertainty. Recent results with ESPRESSO and JWST data provide vivid illustrations of the daunting effects of such limiting factor. An ambitious, ground-breaking, and comprehensive effort to model and correct out stellar activity effects shall therefore be undertaken. Our pioneering results show that the unique combination of a physical model and contemporaneous multi-technique monitoring can disentangle the effects of stellar activity from RV time-series and transit spectroscopy. The SPOTLESS project will implement this methodology by building a realistic stellar activity simulator and develop correction strategies using, e.g. machine learning algorithms and direct inversion. This is more reliable than purely data-driven methods, which often suffer from overfitting due to the lack of a physical context. Four main objectives will be pursued: 1) A physical model of the active solar surface to explain Sun-as-a-star observables, 2) Generalise to other spectral types & parameters, 3) Physically-motivated RV activity corrections at 10 cm/s, and 4) Physically-motivated transit activity corrections at 10 ppm. From available and future observations, SPOTLESS will deliver new challenging exoplanet RV discoveries and unbiased transmission spectra, taking exoplanet research to the next level by enabling the detection and characterisation of exoearths, and the eventual search for signs of biological activity.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences physical sciences astronomy planetary sciences planets exoplanetology
- natural sciences physical sciences optics spectroscopy
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
28006 MADRID
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.