Mercredi 3 avril 2013, 14:30, salle des séminaires

Le "lumineux" destin de la base de données EROS-2

The EROS-2 collaboration nightly monitored dense stellar fields towards the Magellanic Clouds and the Galactic Centre between July 1996 and March 2003. As the main goal of the project was to probe the presence of baryonic dark matter under the form of compact objects in the Halo, the net result was a dataset of 87 million light curves with high astrophysical interest, mainly to study various populations of variable stars. Some studies will be summarized, including:

• beat Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds
• methods to study and classify long period variables (LPV) with applications to the LMC ones
• identification of QSO candidates using variability features in light curves, with application ton the LMC ones
• identification of R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars, a very rare type of objects which are potential progenitors of type Ia supernovae

This dataset has been used to prototype the database of variable stars which will result from the GAIA spatial probe, and as comparison basis for the VMC project, the near infrared survey of the Magellanic Clouds using the VISTA telescope (ESO Paranal).
Some perspectives will be given in conclusion.