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Description
CoRoT, a space astronomy mission, has measured photometric micro-variability of stars from minutes to months (up to 150 days) with a high duty cycle (more than 90%). The mission was led by CNES in association with four French laboratories and 7 participating countries and agencies (Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and the ESA Science Programme). The satellite was composed of a PROTEUS platform (the 3rd in the series) and a unique instrument: a stellar rapid photometer. It was launched on December 27th 2006 by a Soyuz Rocket, from Baikonour. The mission has lasted almost 6 years (the nominal 3-year duration and a 3-year extension) and has observed more than 160 000 stars. It stopped sending data on November 2nd 2012. Two regions of the sky were accessible for long period of time: circles of 10 degrees centered on the equator around alpha=06:50 and alpha=18:50. They were called the CoRoT eyes: the "anticenter" and the "center eye" (as they are approximately in these directions). Each pointing covers 1.4x2.8 square degrees within one of those CoRoT eyes. The original scientific objectives were focussed on the study of stellar pulsations (asteroseismology) to probe the internal structure of stars, and the detection of small exoplanets through their "transit" in front of their host star, and the measurement of their size. This lead to introduce two modes of observations, working simultaneously: - The "bright star" mode dedicated to very precise seismology of a small sample of bright and closeby stars - The "faint star" mode, observing a very large number of stars at the same time, to detect transits, which are rare events, as they imply the alignment of the star, the planet and the observer. The large amount of data gathered in this mode turned out to be extremely fruitful for many topics of stellar physics. Beyond these two initial objectives, CoRoT data revealed stellar variability associated with various other phenomena: granulation, rotational modulation by spots associated with magnetic activity, oblateness induced by a nearby companion star, ... The data of this CoRoT CDS archive correspond to the legacy release V4.4 of CoRoT N2 data. A complete description can be found in the "CoRoTN2versions_30sept2014.pdf" document available on the vizier ftp as well as on project websites listed in the "See also" field below. Other archives provide an access to the CoRoT data at different levels, or to complementary catalogues - the CoRoT IAS archive at idoc-corot.ias.u-psud.fr/ and mirrors of this archive at exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/ETSS/CoRoT_exo_index.html and at exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/ETSS/CoRoT_astero_index.html - archive at https://sipad-corot.cnes.fr/ or at the CoRoT IAS archive, but they require a deep understanding of the instrument and the observation conditions to be scientifically helpful. - Raw data N0 are available upon request at the CoRoT CNES archive. - Complementary data on the CoRoT targets, obtained through ground based complementary observations, can be found in :
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