Winter sky brightness and cloud cover at Dome A, Antarctica
At the summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A offers an intriguing location for future large scale optical astronomical observatories. The Gattini Dome A project was created to measure the optical sky brightness and large area cloud cover of the winter-time sky above this high altitude Antarctic si...
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Other Authors: | |
Format: | Book Part |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Cambridge University Press
2013
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://authors.library.caltech.edu/41618/ https://authors.library.caltech.edu/41618/1/Moore_2012p34.pdf https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20131002-131453985 |
Summary: | At the summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A offers an intriguing location for future large scale optical astronomical observatories. The Gattini Dome A project was created to measure the optical sky brightness and large area cloud cover of the winter-time sky above this high altitude Antarctic site. The wide field camera and multi-filter system was installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led traverse to Dome A in January 2008. This automated wide field camera consists of an Apogee U4000 interline CCD coupled to a Nikon fisheye lens enclosed in a heated container with glass window. The system contains a filter mechanism providing a suite of standard astronomical photometric filters (Bessell B, V, R) and a long-pass red filter for the detection and monitoring of airglow emission. The system operated continuously throughout the 2009, and 2011 winter seasons and part-way through the 2010 season, recording long exposure images sequentially for each filter. We have in hand one complete winter-time dataset (2009) returned via a manned traverse. We present here the first measurements of sky brightness in the photometric V band, cloud cover statistics measured so far and an estimate of the extinction. |
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