The First Release of the CSTAR Point Source Catalog from Dome A, Antarctica

• Published in: Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
• Main Authors: Zhou, Xu, Fan, Zhou, Jiang, Zhaoji, Ashley, M. C. B., Cui, Xiangqun, Feng, LongLong, Gong, Xuefei, Hu, Jingyao, Kulesa, C. A., Lawrence, J. S., Liu, Genrong, Luong-Van, D. M., Ma, Jun, Moore, A. M., Qin, Weijia, Shang, Zhaohui, Storey, J. W. V., Sun, Bo, Travouillon, T., Walker, C. K., Wang, Jiali, Wang, Lifan, Wu, Jianghua, Wu, Zhenyu, Xia, Lirong, Yan, Jun, Yang, Ji, Yang, Huigen, Yuan, Xiangyan, York, D., Zhang, Zhanhai, Zhu, Zhenxi
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2010
• Subjects: Antarctic; Pacific; Plato; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Australian Antarctic Division; International Polar Year; Polar Research Institute of China
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1086/651526

In 2008 January the twenty-fourth Chinese expedition team successfully deployed the Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) to Dome A, the highest point on the Antarctic plateau. CSTAR consists of four 14.5 cm optical telescopes, each with a different filter (g, r, i, and open) and has a 4.5° × 4.5° field of view (FOV). It operates robotically as part of the Plateau Observatory, PLATO, with each telescope taking an image every ~30 s throughout the year whenever it is dark. During 2008, CSTAR 1 performed almost flawlessly, acquiring more than 0.3 million i-band images for a total integration time of 1728 hr during 158 days of observations. For each image taken under good sky conditions, more than 10,000 sources down to ~16th magnitude could be detected. We performed aperture photometry on all the sources in the field to create the catalog described herein. Since CSTAR has a fixed pointing centered on the south celestial pole (decl. = -90°), all the sources within the FOV of CSTAR were monitored continuously for several months. The photometric catalog can be used for studying any variability in these sources, and for the discovery of transient sources such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and minor planets. © 2010 Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Received 2009 November 23; accepted 2010 January 25; published 2010 February 24. This study has been supported by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation through grants 10873016, 10803007, 10473012, 10573020, 10633020, 10673012, and 10603006, and by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), No. 2007CB815403. This research is also supported by the Chinese PANDA International Polar Year project, the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), and the international science and technology cooperation projects 2008DFA20420 of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. The PLATO observatory was supported by the Australian Research Council and the Australian Antarctic Division. Iridium communications were provided by the US National Science ...