Data release of the AST3-2 automatic survey from Dome A, Antarctica

• Published in: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Main Authors: Yang, Xu, Hu, Yi, Shang, Zhaohui, Ma, Bin, Ashley, Michael C B, Cui, Xiangqun, Du, Fujia, Fu, Jianning, Gong, Xuefei, Gu, Bozhong, Jiang, Peng, Li, Xiaoyan, Li, Zhengyang, Tao, Charling, Wang, Lifan, Xu, Lingzhe, Yang, Shi-hai, Yu, Ce, Yuan, Xiangyan, Zhou, Ji-lin, Zhu, Zhenxi
• Other Authors: National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Basic Research Program of China
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press (OUP) 2023
• Subjects: Space and Planetary Science; Astronomy and Astrophysics; Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad498; https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/mnras/stad498/49231492/stad498.pdf; https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-pdf/520/4/5635/49390826/stad498.pdf

ABSTRACT AST3-2 is the second of the three Antarctic Survey Telescopes, aimed at wide-field time-domain optical astronomy. It is located at Dome A, Antarctica, which is by many measures the best optical astronomy site on the Earth’s surface. Here we present the data from the AST3-2 automatic survey in 2016 and the photometry results. The median 5σ limiting magnitude in i-band is 17.8 mag and the light-curve precision is 4 mmag for bright stars. The data release includes photometry for over 7 million stars, from which over 3500 variable stars were detected, with 70 of them newly discovered. We classify these new variables into different types by combining their light-curve features with stellar properties from surveys such as StarHorse.