C ○ 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. doi:10.1088/0004-6256/140/2/602 SKY BRIGHTNESS AND TRANSPARENCY IN THE i-BAND AT DOME A, ANTARCTICA

• Main Authors: Hu Zou, Xu Zhou, Zhaoji Jiang, M. C. B. Ashley, Xiangqun Cui, Longlong Feng, Xuefei Gong, Jingyao Hu, C. A. Kulesa, J. S. Lawrence, Genrong Liu, D. M. Luong-van, A. M. Moore, C. R. Pennypacker, Zhaohui Shang, J. W. V. Storey, T. Travouillon, C. K. Walker, Jiali Wang, Lifan Wang, Jianghua Wu, Zhenyu Wu, Lirong Xia, Huigen Yang, Yongqiang Yao, Xiangyan Yuan, D. G. York, Zhanhai Zhang, Zhenxi Zhu
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.228.6503; http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/%7Emcba/pubs/zou10a.pdf

The i-band observing conditions at Dome A on the Antarctic plateau have been investigated using data acquired during 2008 with the Chinese Small Telescope Array. The sky brightness, variations in atmospheric transparency, cloud cover, and the presence of aurorae are obtained from these images. The median sky brightness of moonless clear nights is 20.5 mag arcsec−2 in the SDSS i band at the south celestial pole (which includes a contribution of about 0.06 mag from diffuse Galactic light). The median over all Moon phases in the Antarctic winter is about