The first scientific satellites that are to explore the stars that are brighter and hotter than the Sun will be developed in Poland during the years 2010-2012. The project will exceed 14 million PLN and will be helpful in understanding the internal structure of the biggest stars in our galaxy. Star oscillation will be investigated with the help of BRITE satellite constellations, designed within the Bright Target Explorer (BRITE) project and developed as the Canadian-Austrian-Polish cooperation.

The satellites will be taking images of the sky with a wide-field camera in order to precisely measure the brightness of the brightest stars. Measuring these stars precisely from the Earth’s surface proves to be a difficult task, even though they are easily detectable during a cloudless night. A few hundred (500-800) stars of the Milky Way will be observed during the experiment.

Polish scientists intend to investigate the mechanism of convection, which is the transportation of energy that takes place in the hottest stars. This is an important occurrence in nature that physicists have known for over 100 years, however it does not yet have a mathematical description. The Brite project will help explain the phenomenon.

Disturbances in the Earth’s atmospheric transparency severely limits the accuracy of the brightness’s measurement. A small wide-angle camera sent into space will see a large amount of bright stars, without the distortion and unpredictable impact of the atmosphere.