BRITE-Constellation: Data processing and photometry

Abstract

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.

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• Short-term variability and mass loss in Be stars IV. Two groups of closely spaced, approximately equidistant frequencies in three decades of space photometry of $\nu$ Puppis (B7-8 IIIe)
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• Let there be more variability in two gamma Cas stars
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• Absolute Parameters of Young Stars: V Puppis
• Stellar masses from granulation and oscillations of 23 bright red giants observed by BRITE - Constellation
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• BRITE observations of $\nu$ Centauri and $\gamma$ Lupi, the first non-eclipsing members of the new class of nascent binaries
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• On the nature of the single eclipse per 80d orbit of the H-rich luminous WN star WR22
• Evolving pulsation of the slowly rotating magnetic $\beta$ Cep star ${\xi }^1$ CMa
• A search for transiting planets in the $\beta$ Pictoris system
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