Testing the photometric stability of BRITE-Constellation

Author(s)

T. Kallinger, W. W. Weiss

Abstract

To characterise the long-term stability and true photometric sensitivity

of a space-based instrument is a difficult task and can be done best

with independent measurements of a relatively quiet star. A rare

occasion for such a test are the complementary observations of some

bright Plejades stars with the Kepler/K2 telescope and the BRITE-Austria

(BAb) and UniBRITE (UBr) satellites. While most of them show a complex

oscillatory behaviour, the frequency spectrum of the bright B-type star

Atlas is relatively simple. From the 71 days-long K2 observations we

extract the three dominant frequencies and show that the residuals have

a noise level of less than 10ppm. While the BAb observations are not

sensitive enough, we find the same periodicities in the 167 days-long

UBr data set, which shows no additional significant signal down to a

noise level of about 100ppm. This impressively demonstrates the

stability of the BRITE instruments in the low-frequency regime and their

capability to detect sub-mmag variability, even for stars close to the

faint end of the nominal dynamic range.

Organisation(s)

Department of Astrophysics

Journal

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society

Publication date

11-2017

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

103003 Astronomy

Keywords

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