Monitor: transiting planets and brown dwarfs in star forming regions and young open clusters

The Monitor project** is a large scale photometric monitoring survey of ten star forming regions and open clusters aged between 1 and 200 Myr using wide-field optical cameras on 2-4 m telescopes worldwide. The primary goal of the project is to search for close-in planets and brown dwarfs at young ages through the detection of transit events. Such detections would provide unprecedented constraints on planet formation and migration time-scales, as well as on evolutionary models of planets and brown dwarfs in an age range where such constraints are very scarce. Additional science goals include rotation period measurements and the analysis of flares and accretion-related variability.