Autonomous operations in extreme environments: the AMICA case

Rico, G. Di; Ragni, M.; Dolci, M.; Straniero, O.; Valentini, Angelo; Valentini, G.; Cianno, A. Di; Giuliani, C.; Bonoli, C.; Bortoletto, F.; D'Alessandro, Maurizio; Magrin, Demetrio; Corcione, L.; Riva, A.; Abia, C.; Mancini, A.; Busso, M.; Tosti, G.

doi:10.1117/12.856857

Cited by 2 publications

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References 20 publications

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“…The continuous wintertime darkness at polar sites can greatly increase the detection efficiency of time-domain astronomy programs. These properties have encouraged the development of Antarctic optical surveys of the Southern sky with imagers and small telescopes, 1,2 such as the Gattini cameras [3][4][5] at Dome C (75 • S) and Dome A (80 • S), and the Chinese Small Telescope Array (CSTAR 6 ) which performed long-term photometry on 10,000 stars in a 23 deg 2 region centered on the South Celestial Pole.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Exoplanet Surveys in the Canadian High Arctic at 80 Degrees North

et al. 2012

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Observations from near the Eureka station on Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian High Arctic at 80• North, benefit from 24-hour darkness combined with dark skies and long cloud-free periods during the winter. Our first astronomical surveys conducted at the site are aimed at transiting exoplanets; compared to mid-latitude sites, the continuous darkness during the Arctic winter greatly improves the survey's detection efficiency for longer-period transiting planets. We detail the design, construction, and testing of the first two instruments: a robotic telescope, and a set of very wide-field imaging cameras. The 0.5m Dunlap Institute Arctic Telescope has a 0.8-square-degree field of view and is designed to search for potentially habitable exoplanets around low-mass stars. The very wide field cameras have several-hundred-square-degree fields of view pointed at Polaris, are designed to search for transiting planets around bright stars, and were tested at the site in February 2012. Finally, we present a conceptual design for the Compound Arctic Telescope Survey (CATS), a multiplexed transient and transit search system which can produce a 10,000-square-degree snapshot image every few minutes throughout the Arctic winter.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Exoplanet Surveys in the Canadian High Arctic at 80 Degrees North

et al. 2012

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Exoplanets From the Arctic: The First Wide-Field Survey at 80°n

Law¹,

Carlberg²,

Salbi³

et al. 2013

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Located within 10 degrees of the North Pole, northern Ellesmere Island offers continuous darkness in the winter months. This capability can greatly enhance the detection efficiency of planetary transit surveys and other time domain astronomy programs. We deployed two wide-field cameras at 80 • N, near Eureka, Nunavut, for a 152-hour observing campaign in February 2012. The 16-megapixel-camera systems were based on commercial f/1.2 lenses with 70mm and 42mm apertures, and they continuously imaged 504 and 1,295 square degrees respectively. In total, the cameras took over 44,000 images and produced better-than-1% precision light curves for approximately 10,000 stars. We describe a new high-speed astrometric and photometric data reduction pipeline designed for the systems, test several methods for the precision flat-fielding of images from very-wide-angle cameras, and evaluate the cameras' image qualities. We achieved a scintillation-limited photometric precision of 1-2% in each 10s exposure. Binning the short exposures into 10-min chunks provided a photometric stability of 2-3 millimagnitudes, sufficient for the detection of transiting exoplanets around the bright stars targeted by our survey. We estimate that the cameras, when operated over the full arctic winter, will be capable of discovering several transiting exoplanets around bright (m V < 9.5) stars. 1

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Autonomous operations in extreme environments: the AMICA case

Cited by 2 publications

References 20 publications

New Exoplanet Surveys in the Canadian High Arctic at 80 Degrees North

New Exoplanet Surveys in the Canadian High Arctic at 80 Degrees North

Exoplanets From the Arctic: The First Wide-Field Survey at 80°n

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