1 research outputs found
Catalogue of BRITE-Constellation targets I. Fields 1 to 14 (November 2013 - April 2016)
The BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE) mission collects photometric time series
in two passbands aiming to investigate stellar structure and evolution. Since
their launches in the years 2013 and 2014, the constellation of five BRITE
nano-satellites has observed a total of more than 700 individual bright stars
in 64 fields. Some targets have been observed multiple times. Thus, the total
time base of the data sets acquired for those stars can be as long as nine
years. Our aim is to provide a complete description of ready-to-use BRITE data,
to show the scientific potential of the BRITE-Constellation data by identifying
the most interesting targets, and to demonstrate and encourage how scientists
can use these data in their research. We apply a decorrelation process to the
automatically reduced BRITE-Constellation data to correct for instrumental
effects. We perform a statistical analysis of the light curves obtained for the
300 stars observed in the first 14 fields during the first ~2.5 years of the
mission. We also perform cross-identification with the International Variable
Star Index. We present the data obtained by the BRITE-Constellation mission in
the first 14 fields it observed from November 2013 to April 2016. We also
describe the properties of the data for these fields and the 300 stars observed
in them. Using these data, we detected variability in 64% of the presented
sample of stars. Sixty-four stars or 21.3% of the sample have not yet been
identified as variable in the literature and their data have not been analysed
in detail. They can therefore provide valuable scientific material for further
research. All data are made publicly available through the BRITE Public Data
Archive and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.Comment: accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics, 13 pages main text, 22 pages of
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