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Science Forum Index » Astro Forum » COROT science observations underway (Forwarded)
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| Author |
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| Andrew Yee |
 Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:23 pm |
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Guest
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Press Relations Office
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales
Paris, France
5 February 2007
COROT science observations underway
After stabilizing the boresight in fine-pointing mode, using the
instrument as a super star tracker, teams at CNES and French national
scientific research centre CNRS have acquired the 1st images on COROT's
exoplanet channel.
Early evaluation of data quality enabled COROT mission teams to begin
acquiring the 1st science data on 3 February. This phase will continue
until the satellite is rotated toward a new star field, a manoeuvre
scheduled for 2 April.
The science community has been eagerly these 1st science data, returned
only 5 weeks after launch following the flawless operation of the
satellite and its systems. This fine success for CNES is a tribute to the
agency's engineering expertise.
These false-colour images highlight luminous intensity: blue stars are the
least bright and white stars the brightest.
In-orbit checkout -- signalling the handover to operations teams who will
be putting the satellite through its paces to gauge overall performance --
should be completed by end March.
The objective of this 1st observation campaign is to finely tune the light
curve processing system. Scientists are expecting to glean valuable data
due to the excellent quality of the field observed, which contains some
very good targets for stellar seismology and will also be ideal for
viewing on the exoplanet channel.
IMAGE CAPTIONS:
[Image 1:
http://www.cnes.fr/imagezoom.php?file=p5764_56e2c2eb9d1d089ee42430cf1a5889c7grand_champ_bleu.jpg&label=]
A star field observed by COROT
White stars with a vertical line through them are too bright to be studied
by COROT, as they saturate the CCD sensor.
[Image 2:
http://www.cnes.fr/imagezoom.php?file=p5764_d23f1c95368be4d2e2f64bcce538b552champ_moyen_bleu.jpg&label=]
50 stars observed by COROT
Image covering a field of view of 0.25 deg x 0.25 deg. COROT can only
study the objects that appear white.
[Image 3:
http://www.cnes.fr/imagezoom.php?file=p5764_7dbf2353314ce53bd844538e2e16d56fpetit_champ_bleu.jpg&label=]
Close-up of the centre of the previous image, showing 3 stars that COROT
will study.
The larger patches in the image are stars with higher surface temperatures. |
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