Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera
The summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A, is proving to be an excellent site for optical, NIR, and THz astronomical observations. GATTINI was a wide-field camera installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led traverse to Dome A in January, 2009. We present here the measuremen...
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Format: | Text |
Language: | unknown |
Published: |
arXiv
2016
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1610.10094 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.10094 |
id |
ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.1610.10094 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.1610.10094 2023-05-15T13:59:03+02:00 Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera Yang, Yi Moore, Anna M. Krisciunas, Kevin Wang, Lifan Ashley, Michael C. B. Fu, Jianning Brown, Peter J. Cui, Xiangqun Feng, Long-Long Gong, Xuefei Hu, Zhongwen Lawrence, Jon S. Luong-Van, Daniel Riddle, Reed L. Shang, Zhaohui Sims, Geoff Storey, John W. V. Suntzeff, Nicholas B. Tothill, Nick Travouillon, Tony Yang, Huigen Yang, Ji Zhou, Xu Zhu, Zhenxi 2016 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1610.10094 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.10094 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aa73dc arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences article-journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2016 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1610.10094 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aa73dc 2022-04-01T11:18:20Z The summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A, is proving to be an excellent site for optical, NIR, and THz astronomical observations. GATTINI was a wide-field camera installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led traverse to Dome A in January, 2009. We present here the measurements of sky brightness with the Gattini ultra-large field of view (90 deg x 90 deg) in the photometric B-, V-, and R-bands, cloud cover statistics measured during the 2009 winter season, and an estimate of the sky transparency. A cumulative probability distribution indicates that the darkest 10% of the nights at Dome A have sky brightness of S_B = 22.98, S_V = 21.86, and S_R = 21.68 mag arcsec^{-2}. These values were obtained around the year 2009 with minimum aurora, and they are comparable to the faintest sky brightness at Mauna Kea and the best sites of northern Chile. Since every filter includes strong auroral lines that effectively contaminate the sky brightness measurements, for instruments working around the auroral lines, either with custom filters or with high spectral resolution instruments, these values could be easily obtained on a more routine basis. In addition, we present example light curves for bright targets to emphasize the unprecedented observational window function available from this ground-based site. These light curves will be published in a future paper. : 36 pages, 18 figure, submitted to AJ Text Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Antarctic The Antarctic Plato ENVELOPE(-54.674,-54.674,-63.433,-63.433) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences |
spellingShingle |
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences Yang, Yi Moore, Anna M. Krisciunas, Kevin Wang, Lifan Ashley, Michael C. B. Fu, Jianning Brown, Peter J. Cui, Xiangqun Feng, Long-Long Gong, Xuefei Hu, Zhongwen Lawrence, Jon S. Luong-Van, Daniel Riddle, Reed L. Shang, Zhaohui Sims, Geoff Storey, John W. V. Suntzeff, Nicholas B. Tothill, Nick Travouillon, Tony Yang, Huigen Yang, Ji Zhou, Xu Zhu, Zhenxi Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera |
topic_facet |
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences |
description |
The summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A, is proving to be an excellent site for optical, NIR, and THz astronomical observations. GATTINI was a wide-field camera installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led traverse to Dome A in January, 2009. We present here the measurements of sky brightness with the Gattini ultra-large field of view (90 deg x 90 deg) in the photometric B-, V-, and R-bands, cloud cover statistics measured during the 2009 winter season, and an estimate of the sky transparency. A cumulative probability distribution indicates that the darkest 10% of the nights at Dome A have sky brightness of S_B = 22.98, S_V = 21.86, and S_R = 21.68 mag arcsec^{-2}. These values were obtained around the year 2009 with minimum aurora, and they are comparable to the faintest sky brightness at Mauna Kea and the best sites of northern Chile. Since every filter includes strong auroral lines that effectively contaminate the sky brightness measurements, for instruments working around the auroral lines, either with custom filters or with high spectral resolution instruments, these values could be easily obtained on a more routine basis. In addition, we present example light curves for bright targets to emphasize the unprecedented observational window function available from this ground-based site. These light curves will be published in a future paper. : 36 pages, 18 figure, submitted to AJ |
format |
Text |
author |
Yang, Yi Moore, Anna M. Krisciunas, Kevin Wang, Lifan Ashley, Michael C. B. Fu, Jianning Brown, Peter J. Cui, Xiangqun Feng, Long-Long Gong, Xuefei Hu, Zhongwen Lawrence, Jon S. Luong-Van, Daniel Riddle, Reed L. Shang, Zhaohui Sims, Geoff Storey, John W. V. Suntzeff, Nicholas B. Tothill, Nick Travouillon, Tony Yang, Huigen Yang, Ji Zhou, Xu Zhu, Zhenxi |
author_facet |
Yang, Yi Moore, Anna M. Krisciunas, Kevin Wang, Lifan Ashley, Michael C. B. Fu, Jianning Brown, Peter J. Cui, Xiangqun Feng, Long-Long Gong, Xuefei Hu, Zhongwen Lawrence, Jon S. Luong-Van, Daniel Riddle, Reed L. Shang, Zhaohui Sims, Geoff Storey, John W. V. Suntzeff, Nicholas B. Tothill, Nick Travouillon, Tony Yang, Huigen Yang, Ji Zhou, Xu Zhu, Zhenxi |
author_sort |
Yang, Yi |
title |
Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera |
title_short |
Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera |
title_full |
Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera |
title_fullStr |
Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera |
title_full_unstemmed |
Optical Sky Brightness and Transparency During the Winter Season at Dome A Antarctica From the Gattini-Allsky Camera |
title_sort |
optical sky brightness and transparency during the winter season at dome a antarctica from the gattini-allsky camera |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1610.10094 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.10094 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-54.674,-54.674,-63.433,-63.433) |
geographic |
Antarctic The Antarctic Plato |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic The Antarctic Plato |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aa73dc |
op_rights |
arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1610.10094 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aa73dc |
_version_ |
1766267421820190720 |