The first release of the AST3-1 Point Source Catalogue from Dome A, Antarctica
International audience he three Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3) aim to carry out time-domain imaging survey at Dome A, Antarctica. The first of the three telescopes (AST3-1) was successfully deployed in 2012 January. AST3-1 is a 500 mm aperture modified Schmidt telescope with a 680 mm diameter pr...
Published in: | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Other Authors: | , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
HAL CCSD
2018
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02097438 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty1392 |
Summary: | International audience he three Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3) aim to carry out time-domain imaging survey at Dome A, Antarctica. The first of the three telescopes (AST3-1) was successfully deployed in 2012 January. AST3-1 is a 500 mm aperture modified Schmidt telescope with a 680 mm diameter primary mirror. AST3-1 is equipped with a SDSS i filter and a 10k × 10k frame transfer CCD camera, reduced to 5k × 10k by electronic shuttering, resulting in a 4.3 deg2 field of view. To verify the capability of AST3-1 for a variety of science goals, extensive commissioning was carried out between 2012 March and May. The commissioning included a survey covering 2000 deg2 as well as the entire Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Frequent repeated images were made of the centre of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a selected exoplanet transit field, and fields including some Wolf–Rayet stars. Here, we present the data reduction and photometric measurements of the point sources observed by AST3-1. We have achieved a survey depth of 19.3 mag in 60 s exposures with 5 mmag precision in the light curves of bright stars. The facility achieves sub-mmag photometric precision under stable survey conditions, approaching its photon noise limit. These results demonstrate that AST3-1 at Dome A is extraordinarily competitive in time-domain astronomy, including both quick searches for faint transients and the detection of tiny transit signals |
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