results OF AO-3 are out

27 May 2022:  The CHEOPS Time Allocation Commitee met on 11-13 May 2022. Following their recommendations, the Director of Science awarded observing time from the Guest Observers Programme to a total of 28 propoals. An overview of the CHEOPS programmes that will be exectued in the period up to the end of the nominal mission (September 2023) can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS AO-3 now open

18 February 2022:  The third call for proposals (AO-3) for observing time in the ESA-run CHEOPS Guest observers programme is open. This will be the final call in the nominal mission, and covers the period 1 July 2022 to 24 September 2023. All relevant information can be found at this link.

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Is CHEOPS for you? 

5 February 2022:  Two presentations providing an overview of CHEOPS and its capabilities, as well as how to apply for observing time, are available from this link. The first provides a very short introduction for those who are curious but possibly not so familiar with the mission, whilst the second provides a more detailed overview.

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Presentations from the CHEOPS Science Workshop VI (11-13 January 2022) now available on-line 

5 February 2022:  CHEOPS Science Workshop VI was held virtually over 11-13 January 2022. Slides from many of the presentations together with posters have been uploaded and are now available from the Workshop webpage which can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS reveals a rugby ball shaped planet

13 January 2022: CHEOPS has been used to observe the fingerprints of tidal derformation in the ultra-short period hot Jupiter, WASP-103 b. A web article on the results can be found at this link, with full details of the study published in the paper by Barros et al (2022) A&A 657, 52.

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Third annual call for proposals for the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme to open on 15 February 2022

13 January 2022: The third Annual Call for proposals for observing time in the ESA run CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme (AO3) will open on 15 February 2022, closing 4 weeks later at midday on 15 March 2022  The timetable for the Announcement of Opportunity is available on the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme webpage. Full details of how to apply for observing time, together with the constraints and requirements of the Call, will be available through the AO-3 webpage. Until the Call opens the webpage will host a number of links and documents to help prospective observers explore the capabilities of CHEOPS

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Third annual call for proposals for the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme postponed

2 November 2021: The third Annual Call for proposals for observing time in the ESA run CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme (AO3), foreseen to come out on 9 November 2021, has been postponed. The new date for the Call will no earlier than the beginning of January 2022. Details will be shared widely when available.

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CHEOPS SCIENcE WORKSHOP

1 October 2021: The CHEOPS workshop VI will be held 11-13 January 2022. Further details on the workshop can be found at this link.

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Don't miss the twist

1 October 2021:   Don't miss the new twist given to the CHEOPS Discretionary Programme through which proposals for observing time on CHEOPS can be submitted throughout the year. The requirement that the target of a discretionary proposal proposal be either newly discovered or newly declared to be of high scientific interest since the closing of the last annual call (1 December 2020) has been waived for proposals let by PhD students (as part of their thesis work) or early career researchers  Further details on the Discretionary Programme can be found at this link.

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Unique exoplanet photobombs CHEOPS study of nearby star system

28 June 2021 While studying two exoplanets in a bright nearby star system, Nu 2 Lupi, CHEOPS unexpectedly spotted the transit of the system's third known planet. To find out more about what these observations of one of the closest Sun-like stars and one of only three naked-eye stars found to host multiple transiting planets revealed, see the web article here, and the paper by Delrez et al. 2021, published in Nature Astronomy.

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An update on CHEOPS Performances

4 June 2021 The CHEOPS Science Team has prepared a set of presentations to update the Community on CHEOPS performances well as a short summary of systematics that are seen in the data. These can be downloaded by clicking on the following links: Measured Photometric Performances of CHEOPS; Timing precision; Observing outside the nominal magnitude range and Systematics in CHEOPS light curves. The presentations build on the summary presented at the time of the opening of AO-2, which can be found here.

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CHEOPS SCIENcE WORKSHOP VI Postponed

4 June 2021: The CHEOPS workshop VI has been postponed. It is currently foreseen that it will be held in early 2022. The dates will be shared here and on the workshop webpage (see this link) as soon as they are available.

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CHEOPS SCIENcE WORKSHOP VI (13-16 July 2021)

3 March 2021: The CHEOPS workshop VI will be held 13-16 July, 2021, some 15 months after the beginning of CHEOPS science operations. The workshop will be the occasion for the planetary science community at large to discuss and share the first main results of CHEOPS.  Details can be found at this link. Registration deadline: 31 May 2021.

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CHEOPS AO-2: List of proposals awarded observing TIME on cheops following AO-2 now out

25 Feb 2021: The list of proposals submitted to AO-2 and awarded observing time on CHEOPS was published today. Details can be found at this link.

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Second announcement of opportunity for observing time on CHEOPS to open soon...

24 Oct 2020: The second annual announcement of opportunity for observing time in the ESA-run Guest Observers Programme will open on 4 November 2020. Key dates can be found at this link. This same page will contain all details relevant to the call, as well as links to the tools and documentation needed to prepare and submit proposals.

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The first cheops science paper and CHEOPS mission Paper are accepted for publication

28 Sept 2020: The first science paper based on CHEOPS observations of WASP 189b (Lendl et al. arXiv:2009.13403) was accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The web story on the work can be found at this link.

Also accepted for publication a few days previously, was the mission paper by Benz et al. (arX:2009.11633, to appear in Experimental Astronomy). This provides a comprehensive overview of the science of CHEOPS, as well as an overview of each of the different elements of this first S-(small) class science mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision Programme.

Note: a list of selected CHOEPS publications can be found at this link, which includes a link to the ADS library which contains all publications published since launch (December 2019).

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The CHEOPS Dicretionary Programme is now open

17 July 2020: The CHEOPS Discretionary Programme, through which proposals for observations with CHEOPS can be submitted at any time of year, is now open.

Details can be found at this link.

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SElected data from in-orbit commissioning available in the CHEOPS mission archive

23 June 2020: A small selection of data taken during In-orbit Commissioning (IOC) has been made available through the CHEOPS Mission Archive. Further details can be found on the CHEOPS data webpage, also in a presentation summarising the key performances determined during IOC which can be found at this link.

   2 July 2020: presentation updated with precise details on access to IOC targets to the mission archive

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Cheops Discretionary Programme

5 May 2020: The CHEOPS Discretionary Programme, through which scientists may apply for up to 5% of the observing time in a given cycle, is currently foreseen to open in Q2 2020. Details of the programme, including how to apply, will be made available in the coming month.

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Cheops starts routine operations

18 April 2020: Routine observations have started!

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Cheops observes its first exoplanets and is ready for science

16 April 2020: Cheops, ESA’s new exoplanet mission, has successfully completed its almost three months of in-orbit commissioning, exceeding expectations for its performance. The mission passed its in-orbit commissioining review on the 25 March 2020, making the handover of responsiblity for operations to the CHEOPS Mission Consortium, led by the University of Bern. The satellite, which will commence routine science operations by the end of April, has already obtained promising observations of known exoplanet-hosting stars, with many exciting discoveries to come.

Details can be found at this link.

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A perfect blur; First image From CHEOPS

7 February 2020: CHEOPS acquired the first image of its initial target, a key milestone in the in-orbit commissioning phase. The intentionally blurry image is a product of the specially designed telescope optics, which are deliberately defocused to maximise the precision of Cheops’ measurements and enable its unprecedented study of exoplanets, or planets in other solar systems.

Details can be found at this link.

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cheops opens its eye to the sky

29 January 2020: Six weeks after the launch of CHEOPS, the telescope cover was opened as part of the mission's in-orbit commissioning.

Details can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS LEOP complete

22 December 2019: The Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) was successfully completed on 22 December 2019, with CHEOPS now in its operational orbit.

Details can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED

18 December 2019: CHEOPS was launched successfully at 05:54 local time from ESA's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The CHEOPS signal was received at the Mission Operations Centre at INTA, in Torrejon (Spain) from the Troll ground station at around 08:43 local time (12:43 CET)

The news release on the launch can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS NEWS ARTICLE: Exoplanet and cosmology discoveries awarded Nobel Prize in Physics

8 October 2019: ESA congratulates 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who have been awarded the prestigious prize for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star, and James Peebles, honoured for the theoretical framework of cosmology used to investigate the Universe on its largest scales.

Details can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS NEWS ARTICLE: CHEOPS passes final mission review before shipment to launch site

29 July 2019: CHEOPS, has successfully passed the final analysis review for its launch on a Soyuz rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Details can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS AO-1: List of APProved GO proposals for Ao-1 now out

24 July 2019: The list of proposals submitted to AO-1 and awarded time on CHEOPS by the Director of Science, based on recommendations made by the TAC, was published today.

Details can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS NEWS ARTICLE: HOW CHEOPS WILL INVESTIGATE PLANET-HOSTING STARS

18 July 2019: As launch approaches for ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, CHEOPS, scientists are rounding off the observing plans for the mission, with the science themes of the core programme announced recently and proposals for guest observations for the first year of CHEOPS operations under evaluation.

The full article can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS JOURNAL ARTICLE #17: Practice makes perfect for CHEOPS inflight operations

25 June 2019: It takes collaboration and teamwork to operate a spacecraft. As the CHEOPS launch approaches, a Europe-wide team is preparing to take control of inflight activities once the satellite is in space.

The full article can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS Brochure available for download

3 April 2019:  The CHEOPS brochure has been published, and can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS AO-1 NOW OPEN

19 March 2019:  The first Announcement of Opportunity calling for proposals for observing time in the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme was released today by the ESA Director of Science, Prof. Günther Hasinger. Information on the opportunity, which is open to the proposers from all around the world, can be found on the AO-1 webpage.

The deadline for proposal submission is Thursday 16 May 2019 14:00 CEST.

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CHEOPS AO-1

15 March 2019: First Announcement of Opportunity in the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme to come out on 19 March 2019 ....

Details on the opportunity, together with how to apply for time will be available at a dedicated website which will open on the 19th. In the meantime, an overview of the capabilities and performances of CHEOPS can be found in the CHEOPS factsheet (double-sided) which can be download from this link.

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CHEOPS Journal arcticle #16: CHEOPS is ready for flight

11 March 2019: Recent months on the CHEOPS mission have seen the completion of spacecraft testing and the conclusion of a very important review (the Satellite Qualification and Acceptance Review), which determined that the satellite is ready to fly.

The full article can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS Journal arcticle #15: A jigsaw falling into place: CHEOPS end-to-end testing complete

12 February 2019: After a successful series of tests, the team that will operate the CHEOPS mission is ready for the activities to follow the satellite launch later this year.

The full article can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS has a launch slot: 15 October - 14 November 2019

23 November 2019:  CHEOPS will lift off on a Soyuz rocket operated by Arianespace from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, sharing the ride into space with a satellite that is part of the Italian Cosmo-SkyMed constellation. It is foreseen that the launch date will be known by August 2019.

The full article can be found at this link.

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CHEOPS Journal arcticle #15: withstanding the sound of launch and avoiding radio interference

 17 October 2018: September was a busy month of acoustic noise testing and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) testing at ESA's technical centre in the Netherlands. The successful tests have shown that the satellite can withstand the high sound pressures of launch and is compatible with its electromagnetic environment at launch and in orbit.

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CHEOPS in the EXOPLANET mission line-up

12 September 2018:  A new graphic has been published, illustrating the place of CHEOPS in the exoplanet mission timeline.     

Versions of the graphics at different resolutions can be downloaded from this link.