PLATO–a robotic observatory for the Antarctic plateau

Ashley, M. C. B.; Allen, G.; Bonner, C. S.; Bradley, Stuart; Cui, Xiangqun; Everett, Jon R.; Li, Feng; Gong, Xiaoli; Hengst, S.; Hu, Jingyao; Jiang, Zhaoji; Kulesa, Craig; Lawrence, Jon; Li, Y.; Luong-Van, D.; McCaughrean, M. J.; Moore, Anna; Pennypacker, C.; Qin, W.; Riddle, Reed; Shang, Zhaohui; Storey, J. W. V.; Sun, Bо; Suntzeff, N.; Tothill, N.; Travouillon, Tony; Walker, Christopher K.; Wang, L.; Yan, Jun; Yang, Huigen; Yang, Ji; York, Donald G.; Yuan, Xiangyan; Zhang, X.; Zhang, Z.; Zhou, Xu; Zhu, Zhenxi

doi:10.1051/eas/1040009

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Above Dome C and Dome A, the thickness of the surface layer remains mostly stable during the night, even though we have night‐to‐night variations as shown in Table 5. This fits with preliminary results shown in Ashley et al (2010) above Dome A. Above South Pole, the thickness varies in a much more important way during the night, with oscillations that can reach 50–100 m. The larger variability of the typical turbulent surface‐layer thickness is also confirmed by the larger value of σ observed above South Pole (Tables 5, 6 and 7).…”

Section: Optical Turbulence Above Dome C Dome a And South Polesupporting

confidence: 89%

“…In the last few years Chinese astronomers have given a new impulse to the site characterization, showing great interest in building astronomical facilities on this site. Optical turbulence measurements during the winter are not yet available but site‐testing programmes are ongoing (Ashley et al 2010). South Pole is interesting in our study because measurements of optical turbulence are available and, at the same time, the site is not located on a summit but on a gentle slope.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Mesoscale optical turbulence simulations above Dome C, Dome A and South Pole

Lascaux

Masciadri

Hagelin

2010

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In two recent papers, the mesoscale model Meso-NH, jointly with the Astro-Meso-NH package, has been validated at Dome C, Antarctica, for the characterization of optical turbulence. It has been shown that the meteorological parameters (temperature and wind speed, on which the optical turbulence depends) as well as the C 2 N profiles above Dome C were correctly reproduced statistically. The three most important derived parameters that characterize the optical turbulence above the Internal Antarctic Plateau -the surface-layer thickness, the seeing in the free atmosphere and the seeing in the total atmosphere -were shown to be in very good agreement with observations. Validation of C 2 N has been performed using all the measurements of the optical turbulence vertical distribution obtained in winter so far. In this paper, in order to investigate the ability of the model to discriminate between different turbulence conditions for site testing, we extend the study to two other potential astronomical sites in Antarctica: Dome A and South Pole, which we expect to be characterized by different turbulence conditions. The optical turbulence has been calculated above these two sites for the same 15 nights studied for Dome C and a comparison between the three sites has been performed. The ability of the Meso-NH model to discriminate between different types of optical turbulence behaviour is confirmed, and it is evident that the three sites considered have different characteristics as regards the seeing and the surface-layer thickness.

show abstract

Section: Optical Turbulence Above Dome C Dome a And South Polesupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mesoscale optical turbulence simulations above Dome C, Dome A and South Pole

Lascaux

Masciadri

Hagelin

2010

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The first PLATO [5][6][7][8][9] became operational at Dome A in 2008 January, and ran continuously for 204 days during that year. [10][11][12] Following a servicing mission in 2008/2009 conducted by the Polar Research Institute of China, PLATO operated without interruption for 1235 days, with no human on site apart from a few weeks during each of the yearly servicing missions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

PLATO-R: a new concept for Antarctic science

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PLATO-R is an autonomous, robotic observatory that can be deployed anywhere on the Antarctic plateau by Twin Otter aircraft. It provides heat, data acquisition, communications, and up to 1 kW of electric power to support astronomical and other experiments throughout the year. PLATO-R was deployed in 2012 January to Ridge A, believed to be the site with the lowest precipitable water vapour (and hence the best atmospheric transmission at terahertz frequencies) on earth. [1][2][3][4] PLATO-R improves upon previous PLATO designs that were built into ten-foot shipping containers by being much smaller and lighter, allowing it to be field-deployable within 2-3 days by a crew of four.

show abstract

“…The electrical power supply and internet communication were provided by a similarly reliable on-site observatory platform, PLATO-A, which is an improved version of the PLATO system developed by UNSW Sydney as an automated observatory platform for CSTAR and other earlier instruments. PLATO-A was designed to provide a continuous 1 kW power source, a warm environment for equipment, and internet communications to the AST3 telescopes for a year without servicing Ashley et al 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exoplanets in the Antarctic Sky. II. 116 Transiting Exoplanet Candidates Found by AST3-II (CHESPA) within the Southern CVZ of TESS

Zhang¹,

Zhang²,

Liang³

et al. 2019

ApJS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report first results from the CHinese Exoplanet Searching Program from Antarctica (CHESPA)a wide-field high-resolution photometric survey for transiting exoplanets carried out using telescopes of the AST3 (Antarctic Survey Telescopes times 3) project. There are now three telescopes (AST3-I, AST3-II, and CSTAR-II) operating at Dome A-the highest point on the Antarctic Plateau-in a fully automatic and remote mode to exploit the superb observing conditions of the site, and its long and uninterrupted polar nights. The search for transiting exoplanets is one of the key projects for AST3. During the austral winters of 2016 and 2017 we used the AST3-II telescope to survey a set of target multiple innovations in the telescope's snow-proofing and defrosting systems. As a result, AST3-II worked well during the extremely cold austral winters of 2016 and 2017, and acquired over 30 TB of high-quality images. During the observational seasons in austral winter, AST3-II is operated remotely and the scheduled observations are executed in a fully-automatic mode. The hardware and software for the facility-including the hardware operation monitor, telescope control computer, and data storage array-were developed by the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) (Shang et al. 2012;Hu et al. 2016). The electrical power supply and internet communication were provided by a similarly reliable on-site observatory platform, PLATO-A, which is an improved version of the PLATO system developed by UNSW Sydney as an automated observatory platform for CSTAR and other earlier instruments. PLATO-A was designed to provide a continuous 1 kW power source, a warm environment for equipment, and internet communications to the AST3 telescopes for a year without servicing Ashley et al. 2010). OBSERVATIONSThe scientific background and observational strategy of CHESPA are described in Zhang et al. (2018). We summarize the key points here. The CHESPA program is dedicated to searching for transiting exoplanets in the southern polar sky at highly negative declinations. It has been running since 2012 using the CSTAR and AST3 telescopes, with a first batch of six exoplanet candidates published by Wang et al. (2014). To maximize collaboration with TESS and enhance the scientific importance of our searching program, we selected 48 target fields close to the South Ecliptic Pole (RA = 06 h 00 m 00 s , Dec = −66 • 33 00 ) and within the TESS ' Southern CVZ (Continuous Viewing Zone) (see Figure 1 and Table 1 for details). All target fields are and are suitable for low-airmass observation from Antarctica. Target stars located in these fields will also be monitored by TESS for continuous 12 month period. Thus, any candidate of interest found within these fields may be followed up and studied thoroughly in the future.These chosen fields are divided into three groups, each of which was originally scheduled for observation over an austral winter in we observed the first group consisting of 10 fields (AST3II004-AST3II013). The second group c...

show abstract

PLATO–a robotic observatory for the Antarctic plateau

Cited by 9 publications

References 12 publications

Mesoscale optical turbulence simulations above Dome C, Dome A and South Pole

Mesoscale optical turbulence simulations above Dome C, Dome A and South Pole

PLATO-R: a new concept for Antarctic science

Exoplanets in the Antarctic Sky. II. 116 Transiting Exoplanet Candidates Found by AST3-II (CHESPA) within the Southern CVZ of TESS

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About