The AST3-NIR Camera for the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey

• Main Authors: Lawrence, Jon, Ashley, Michael, Burton, Michael, Cui, Xiangqun, Churilov, Vladimir, Content, Robert, Gillingham, Peter, Glazebrook, Karl, Gu, Bozhong, Ireland, Michael, Jiang, Xiang, Lu, Haiping, Moore, Anna, Mould, Jeremy, Staszak, Nicholas F., Tims, Julia, Tuthill, Peter, Wang, Lifan, Yuan, Xiangjan, Zhang, Kaiyuan, Zhelem, Ross, Zheng, Jessica
• Other Authors: Evans, Christopher J., Simard, Luc, Takami, Hideki
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 2016
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/74398/; https://authors.library.caltech.edu/74398/1/990851.pdf; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20170217-081951955

AST3-NIR is a new infrared camera for deployment with the AST3-3 wide-field survey telescope to Dome A on the Antarctic plateau. This project is designed to take advantage of the low Antarctic infrared sky thermal background (particularly within the Kdark near infrared atmospheric window at 2.4 μm) and the long Antarctic nights to provide high sensitivity temporal data from astronomical sources. The data collected from the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey (KISS) will be used to conduct a range of astronomical science cases including the study of supernovae, exo-planets, variable stars, and the cosmic infrared background.