Field optimization and CCD data simulation for the antarctic International Concordia Explorer Telescope (ICE‐T)

Abstract

We performed extensive data simulations for the planned ultra-wide-field, high-precision photometric telescope ICE-T (International Concordia Explorer Telescope). ICE-T consists of two 60 cm-aperture Schmidt telescopes with a joint field of view simultaneously in two photometric bandpasses. Two CCD cameras, each with a single 10.3k×10.3k thinned backilluminated device, would image a sky field of 65 square degrees. Given a location of the telescope at Dome C on the East Antarctic Plateau, we searched for the star fields that best exploit the technical capabilities of the instrument and the site. We considered the effects of diurnal air mass and refraction variations, solar and lunar interference, interstellar absorption, overexposing of bright stars and ghosts, crowding by background stars, and the ratio of dwarf to giant stars in the field. Using NOMAD, SSA, Tycho-2 and 2MASS-based stellar positions and BV IJH magnitudes for these fields, we simulated the effects of the telescope's point-spread-function, the integration, and the co-addition times. Simulations of transit light curves are presented for the selected star fields and convolved with the expected instrumental characteristics. For the brightest stars, we showed that ICE-T should be capable of detecting a 2 R Earth Super Earth around a G2 solartype star, as well as an Earth around an M0-star -if these targets were as abundant as hot Jupiters. Simultaneously, the telescope would monitor the host star's surface activity in an astrophysically interpretable manner.

Project BMK10k: Zeiss Ballistische Messkammer with a 10k × 10k CCD for ground‐based PLATO support

“…In order to obtain a better estimate for the expected light curve precision, we considered different CCD window sizes and defocus, effects of diurnal air mass and refraction variations, solar and lunar interference, interstellar absorption, overexposing of bright stars and ghosts, and statistical crowding by background stars following our work for another telescope in Fügner et al (). Using NOMAD, SSA, Tycho‐2, and 2MASS‐based stellar positions and BVIJH magnitudes for these fields, we had simulated the effects of the telescope's PSF, the integration time, and the coaddition times.…”

Development of the opto-mechanical design for ICE-T

“…So the image is partitioned in sixteen parts, each of 2,650×1,325K px. For the selection of optimal star fields several parameters have been considered: effects of diurnal air mass and refraction variations, solar and lunar interference, interstellar absorption, overexposing of bright stars and ghosts, crowding by background stars, maximization of stars with possible transits, namely dwarf vs giant stars (Fügner et al 2009). Two best fields per operation case have been sorted out investigating 19 different trial regions, taken from NOMAD (Zacharias et al 2005) and other catalogs.…”