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Register a new userBRITE-Constellation: nanosatellites for precision photometry of bright stars
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BRITE-Constellation (where BRITE stands for BRIght Target Explorer) is an international nanosatellite mission to monitor photometrically, in two colours, the brightness and temperature variations of stars generally brighter than mag(V) ~ 4, with precision and time coverage not possible from the ground. The current mission design consists of six nanosats (hence Constellation): two from Austria, two from Canada, and two from Poland. Each 7 kg nanosat carries an optical telescope of aperture 3 cm feeding an uncooled CCD. One instrument in each pair is equipped with a blue filter, the other with a red filter. Each BRITE instrument has a wide field of view (~24 degrees), so up to about 15 bright stars can be observed simultaneously, sampled in 32 pixel x 32 pixel sub-rasters. Photometry of additional fainter targets, with reduced precision but thorough time sampling, will be possible through onboard data processing. The BRITE sample is dominated by the most intrinsically luminous stars: massive stars seen at all evolutionary stages, and evolved medium-class stars at the very end of their nuclear burning phases. The goals of BRITE-Constellation are to (1) measure p- and g-mode pulsations to probe the interiors and ages of stars through asteroseismology; (2) look for varying spots on the stars surfaces carried across the stellar disks by rotation, which are the sources of co-rotating interaction regions in the winds of the most luminous stars, probably arising from magnetic subsurface convection; and (3) search for planetary transits.
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BRITE-Constellation (where BRITE stands for BRIght Target Explorer) is an international nanosatellite mission to monitor photometrically, in two colours, brightness and temperature variations of stars brighter than V = 4. The current mission design consists of three pairs of 7 kg nanosats from Austria, Canada and Poland carrying optical telescopes and CCDs. One instrument in each pair is equipped with a blue filter; the other, a red filter. The first two nanosats are UNIBRITE, designed and built by University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies - Space Flight Laboratory and its twin, BRITE-Austria, built by the Technical University Graz with support of UTIAS-SFL. They were launched on 25 February 2013 by the Indian Space Agency under contract to the Canadian Space Agency into a low-Earth dusk-dawn polar orbit.
The BRITE mission is a pioneering space project aimed at the long-term photometric monitoring of the brightest stars in the sky by means of a constellation of nano-satellites. Its main advantage is high photometric accuracy and time coverage inaccessible from the ground. The main aim of this paper is the presentation of procedures used to obtain high-precision photometry from a series of images acquired by the BRITE satellites in two modes of observing, stare and chopping. We developed two pipelines corresponding to the two modes of observing. The assessment of the performance of both pipelines is presented. It is based on two comparisons, which use data from six runs of the UniBRITE satellite: (i) comparison of photometry obtained by both pipelines on the same data, which were partly affected by charge transfer inefficiency (CTI), (ii) comparison of real scatter with theoretical expectations. It is shown that for CTI-affected observations, the chopping pipeline provides much better photometry than the other pipeline. For other observations, the results are comparable only for data obtained shortly after switching to chopping mode. Starting from about 2.5 years in orbit, the chopping mode of observing provides significantly better photometry for UniBRITE data than the stare mode. This paper shows that high-precision space photometry with low-cost nano-satellites is achievable. The proposed meth- ods, used to obtain photometry from images affected by high impulsive noise, can be applied to data from other space missions or even to data acquired from ground-based observations.
Results of an analysis of the BRITE-Constellation photometry of the SB1 system and ellipsoidal variable $pi^5$ Ori (B2,III) are presented. In addition to the orbital light-variation, which can be represented as a five-term Fourier cosine series with the frequencies $f_{rm orb}$, $2f_{rm orb}$, $3f_{rm orb}$, $4f_{rm orb}$ and $6f_{rm orb}$, where $f_{rm orb}$ is the systems orbital frequency, the star shows five low-amplitude but highly-significant sinusoidal variations with frequencies $f_i$ ($i ={}$2,..,5,7) in the range from 0.16 to 0.92~d$^{-1}$. With an accuracy better than 1$sigma$, the latter frequencies obey the following relations: $f_2-f_4 = 2f_{rm orb}$, $f_7 - f_3 = 2f_{rm orb}$, $f_5 = f_3 - f_4 = f_7 - f_2$. We interpret the first two relations as evidence that two high-order $ell = 1, m = 0$ gravity modes are self-excited in the systems tidally distorted primary component. The star is thus an ellipsoidal SPB variable. The last relations arise from the existence of the first-order differential combination term between the two modes. Fundamental parameters, derived from photometric data in the literature and the {em Hipparcos/} parallax, indicate that the primary component is close to the terminal stages of its main sequence (MS) evolution. Extensive Wilson-Devinney modeling leads to the conclusion that best fits of the theoretical to observed light-curves are obtained for the effective temperature and mass consistent with the primarys position in the HR diagram and suggests that the secondary is in an early MS evolutionary stage.
Having a need to perform differential photometry for tens of thousands stars in a several square degrees field, we developed Astrokit program. The software corrects the star brightness variations caused by variations of atmospheric transparency: to this end, the program selects for each star an individual ensemble of reference stars having similar magnitudes and positions in the frame. With ten or more reference stars in the ensemble, the differences between their spectral types and the spectral type of the object studied become unimportant. Astrokit searches for variable stars using Robust Median Statistics criterion, which allows candidate variables to be selected more efficiently than by analyzing the standard deviation of star magnitudes. The software allows very precise automatic analysis of long inhomogeneous sets of photometric observations of a large number of objects to be performed, making it possible to find hot Jupiter type exoplanet transits and low-amplitude variables. We describe the algorithm of the program and the results of its application to reduce the data of the photometric sky survey in Cygnus as well as observations of the open cluster NGC188 and the transit of the exoplanet WASP-11 b / HAT-P-10 b, performed with the MASTER-II-URAL telescope of the Kourovka Astronomical Observatory of the Ural Federal University.
BRITE (BRIght Target Explorer) Constellation, the first nanosatellite mission applied to astrophysical research, is a collaboration among Austria, Canada and Poland. The fleet of satellites (6 launched, 5 functioning) performs precise optical photometry of the brightest stars in the night sky. A pioneering mission like BRITE - with optics and instruments restricted to small volume, mass and power in several nanosatellites, whose measurements must be coordinated in orbit - poses many unique challenges. We discuss the technical issues, including problems encountered during on-orbit commissioning (especially higher-than expected sensitivity of the CCDs to particle radiation). We describe in detail how the BRITE team has mitigated these problems, and provide a complete overview of mission operations. This paper serves as a template for how to effectively plan, build and operate future low-cost niche-driven space astronomy missions.
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