BRITE-Constellation: Nanosatellites for Precision Photometry of Bright Stars

By W. Weiss, S. Rucinski, A. Moffat, A. Schwarzenberg-Czerny, O. Koudelka, C. Grant, R. Zee, R. Kuschnig, St. Mochnacki, J. Matthews and 10 more. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, 2013

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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°), so up to about 15 bright stars can be observed simultaneously, sampled in 32 × 32 pixels 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-mass 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.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72063489e35f7391a376b14ec8fd5afaa4b8e775

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

  1. A. Moffat
  2. R. Kuschnig
  3. S. Rucinski

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