Space Photometry with BRITE-Constellation
Abstract
BRITE-Constellation is devoted to high-precision optical photometric monitoring of bright stars, distributed all over the Milky Way, in red and/or blue passbands. Photometry from space avoids the turbulent and absorbing terrestrial atmosphere and allows for very long and continuous observing runs with high time resolution and thus provides the data necessary for understanding various processes inside stars (e.g., asteroseismology) and in their immediate environment. While the first astronomical observations from space focused on the spectral regions not accessible from the ground it soon became obvious around 1970 that avoiding the turbulent terrestrial atmosphere significantly improved the accuracy of photometry and satellites explicitly dedicated to high-quality photometry were launched. A perfect example is BRITE-Constellation, which is the result of a very successful cooperation between Austria, Canada and Poland. Research highlights for targets distributed nearly over the entire HRD are presented, but focus primarily on massive and hot stars.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2106.12952,
title = {Space Photometry with BRITE-Constellation},
author = {Weiss W. W and Zwintz K. and Kuschnig R. and Handler G. and Moffat A. F. J. and Baade D. and Bowman D. M. and Granzer T. and Kallinger T. and Koudelka O. F. and Lovekin C. C. and Neiner C. and Pablo H. and Pigulski A. and Popowicz A. and Ramiaramanantsoa T. and Rucinski S. M. and Strassmeier K. G. and Wade G. A},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.12952},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
BRITE-Constellation was designed, built, launched, and is operated and supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, the University of Vienna, the Technical University of Graz, the University of Innsbruck, the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, the Foundation for Polish Science and Technology and the National Science Centre. 23 figures