The Concordia Station on the Antarctic plateau: the best site on earth for 21st century astronomers

Abstract. On the Antarctic plateau, a joint project of French and Italian polar programmes is nearing completion: the Concordia station will be open for winter-over operation in 2005. The high altitude and high latitude of this site, the exceptionally cold, clear and stable atmosphere, its incredibl...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Eric Fossat
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.692.7114
http://www.ias.ac.in/jaa/junsep2005/jaa455.pdf
Description
Summary:Abstract. On the Antarctic plateau, a joint project of French and Italian polar programmes is nearing completion: the Concordia station will be open for winter-over operation in 2005. The high altitude and high latitude of this site, the exceptionally cold, clear and stable atmosphere, its incredible astronomical seeing, the almost indefinitely flat snow surface and the not-so-difficult access make this site the most promising on Earth for future ground-based astronomical projects in various fields, including long term photometry, infrared high sensitivity imaging and high angular resolution and high contrast imaging. Key words. Site testing—astronomical photometry—infrared astronomy—sub-mm astronomy—Antarctic astronomy.