Science goals for an Antarctic Large Infrared Telescope

Over the past few years, site-testing at the South Pole has revealed conditions that are uniquely favorable for infrared astronomy. In particular, the exceptionally low sky brightness throughout the near- and mid-infrared leads to the possibility of a modest-sized telescope achieving comparable sens...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mg. Burton, J. Wv. Storey, M. C. B. Ashley
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Antarctica
Site Testing
Astronomy
Infrared
Star Formation
Interstellar Medium
Disks
Antarctic
South Pole
Antarc*
South pole
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.148.3217
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mcba/pubs/burton00a.pdf
Description
Summary:Over the past few years, site-testing at the South Pole has revealed conditions that are uniquely favorable for infrared astronomy. In particular, the exceptionally low sky brightness throughout the near- and mid-infrared leads to the possibility of a modest-sized telescope achieving comparable sensitivity to that of existing 8—10 metre class telescopes. An 8 m Antarctic telescope, if constructed, would yield performance that would be unrivaled until the advent of the NGST. In this paper we review the scientific potential of infrared telescopes in Antarctica, and discuss their complementarity with existing 8—10 m class telescopes.

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