Dome A site testing and future plans

Abstract

Abstract. In January 2005, members of a Chinese expedition team were the first humans to visit Dome A on the Antarctic plateau, a site predicted to be one of the very best astronomical sites on earth.In 2006, the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy (CCAA) was founded to promote the development of astronomy in Antarctica, especially at Dome A. CCAA has since taken part in two traverses to Dome A, organized by the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), in the austral summers of 2007/2008 and 2008/2009. These traverses resulted in the installation of many site-testing and science instruments, supported by the PLATO observatory. The Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) has produced excellent results from Dome A.Our future plans include further site-testing work, and the following full-scale science instruments: three 0.5-m Antarctic Schmidt Telescopes (AST3), and a proposed 4-m telescope for wide-field infrared high spatial-resolution surveys. The first AST3 telescope is under construction and is scheduled for installation in 2011.

Variable Stars Observed in the Galactic Disk by AST3-1 from Dome A, Antarctica

“…• 21 ′ 11 ′′ E, elevation 4093m above the sea level) is the highest region on the Antarctic plateau and is being used for a series of three increasingly ambitious optical survey telescopes (Yang et al 2009;Gong et al 2010). The first optical telescope was called CSTAR (the Chinese Small Telescope ARray; Yuan et al 2008) with an effective aperture of 10 cm and field of view (FOV) of 20 deg 2 and was installed at Dome A in January 2008; CSTAR produced a 3-year photometric dataset, and a number of studies of stellar variability have been published (Zhou et al 2010a,b;Wang et al 2011Wang et al , 2012Zhou et al 2013;Wang et al 2013a,b;Meng et al 2013;Huang et al 2013;Fu et al 2014;Qian et al 2014;Wang et al 2014a,b;Zong et al 2015;Huang et al 2015;Wang et al 2015;Yang et al 2015;Oelkers et al 2015Oelkers et al , 2016Liang et al 2016).…”

First Assessment of Mountains on Northwestern Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, as Potential Astronomical Observing Sites

“…]) and, more recently, Dome C (S76°, 3260 m). A permanent station at Dome A (S80°, 4200 m), the highest elevation on the plateau, is planned (Gong et al 2010). In the arctic, as an analog to the antarctic plateau, the summit of the Greenland icecap (N72°, 3200 m) has gained interest (Anderson & Rasmussen 2006).…”

AMICA: the NIR/MIR camera for automatic astronomical observations from Dome C, Antarctica

“…These sites are not the unique to offer excellent observing conditions, however: new sites are opened to the interest of the world astronomical community. Dome A [80 o 22 S, 77 o 21 E, 4084 m] is being extensively studied since few years [29,21] and first astronomical optical observations are also reported there [44] ; Dome Fuji (Dome F, [77 o 19 S, 39 o 42 E, 3810 m]) is being studied for installation of a medium-size telescope [37] ; and finally, Ridge A (about 90 miles far from Dome A, at an elevation of 4050 m), defined as "the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth", is claimed as the possible best astronomical site on the terrestrial surface [32] . Unfortunately the extreme climate, responsible for the excellent observing conditions, dramatically limits the human activities as well as the instrumental endurance.…”