The third annual workshop for the french community involved on the PLATO spatial mission will take place on Januray 24th and 25th 2017 in Montpellier and will focus on Stellar Activity. 

Stars are dynamical objects evolving with time. They harbour nonlinear mechanisms such as turbulent convection, intense flares and magnetic activity, powerful winds that all interact and lead to a complex highly time-dependent behaviour. Planets around most stars are embedded in such intense magnetic activity and may modify it through star-planet interactions.
In our search for planets, the properties of the host stars need to be carefully inferred (e.g. by asteroseismic analyses, complementary observations and simulations/modeling) in order to properly disentangle the sources of variability.

PLATO will bring unprecedented high-quality photometric data on hundred of thousands of stars and their planets that will constrain stellar activity and evolution leading to the discovery of habitable planets and their precise characterization. In order to reach the required accuracy, being able to model and understand the many facets of stellar activity is essential because stellar activity introduces variability that hides the imprint of the planets. Activity indeed affects both the planet's transit profiles and radial velocity signatures and hinder the characterization of the planet.

This 3rd PLATO-France workshop will focus on stellar activity, its origin, variability, and dependence on physical parameters (such as mass, age, rotation, metallicity…) and how we prepare the community to analyze and model the upcoming PLATO data.