The SPECULOOS transit survey: hunting for red worlds (contributed talk)

The thorough characterization of temperate terrestrial exoplanets holds the promise ofrevolutionizing our understanding of rocky worlds by enabling us to assess their diversityat the galactic scale, not only in terms of orbits, but also in terms of atmospheric compo-sitions, surface conditions, and habitability. In this context, the 1000 nearest ultracool(M7-type and later) dwarf stars are particularly interesting targets for a transit search,as their proximity combined to their small size and faint luminosity should make possiblethe characterization of a transiting temperate planet as small as the Earth -and evensmaller- with upcoming facilities. I will give here an update on SPECULOOS (Searchfor habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), a new ground-based photometricsurvey that aims to explore these small nearby stars for transits. The SPECULOOSSouthern Observatory (SSO), the core facility of SPECULOOS consisting of four 1mrobotic telescopes, has been successfully installed at ESO Paranal Observatory (Chile)and achieved its official first light in December 2018. I will present the features andperformances of the SSO facility, as well as the properties of the data gathered so farand status of the survey.