2010 Copyright Project Solaris. All rights reserved.
Why "Solaris"? Solaris is a novel by an outstanding Polish writer Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006). The novel is about a circumbinary planet covered with a supposedly conscious ocean. The ocean is studied by humans (with little success) from a station hovering above its surface. Since the novel was for the first time published in 1961, it precedes Star Wars' Tatooine planet (1977) in terms of the first case of a circumbinary planet in pop culture. Solaris was turned into a movie twice: by a great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) and more recently by a Holywood filmamker Steven Soderbergh (starring George Clooney).
The project has to main goals: (1) to detect circumbinary planets around a sample of up to 350 eclipsing binary stars using eclipse timing and precision radial velocities.(2) to characterize the binary stars with an unprecedented precision to test the stellar structure and evolution models.
In order to achieve these goals we will establish a global network of four 0.5-meter robotic telescopes (Australia, Africa, South America) to collect high precision, high cadence light curves of the binaries.
The first telescope was constructed thanks to the "FOCUS" grant (170 kEuro) from the Foundation for Polish Science, the additional three telescopes and the overall costs of the project for the next 5 years will be covered from the highly competitive and prestigious "Ideas" Starting Grant of the European Research Council (1.5 mln Euro).