Abstract

The BRITE nano-satellite mission is an international Austrian-Canadian-Polish project of six small space tele- scopes measuring photometric variability of the brightest stars in the sky. Due to the limited space onboard and the weight constraints, the CCD detectors are poorly shielded and suffer from proton impact. Shortly after the launch, various CCD defects emerged, producing various sources of impulsive noise in the images. In this paper, the methods of BRITE data-processing are described and their efficiency evaluated. The proposed algorithm, developed by the BRITE photometric team, consists of three main parts: (1) image classification, (2) image processing with aperture photometry and (3) tunable optimization of parameters. The presented pipeline allows one to achieve milli-magnitude precision in photometry. Some first scientific results of the mission have just been published.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call