Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica
Dome C in Antarctica is a promising site for photometric observations thanks to the continuous night during the Antarctic winter and favorable weather conditions. We developed instruments to assess the quality of this site for photometry in the visible and to detect and characterize variable objects...
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ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.1807.10807 2023-05-15T13:57:08+02:00 Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica Crouzet, N. Chapellier, E. Guillot, T. Mékarnia, D. Agabi, A. Fanteï-Caujolle, Y. Abe, L. Rivet, J. -P. Schmider, F. -X. Fressin, F. Bondoux, E. Challita, Z. Pouzenc, C. Valbousquet, F. Bayliss, D. Bonhomme, S. Daban, J. -B. Gouvret, C. Blazit, A. 2018 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1807.10807 https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10807 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732565 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 2018 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1807.10807 https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732565 2022-04-01T09:30:31Z Dome C in Antarctica is a promising site for photometric observations thanks to the continuous night during the Antarctic winter and favorable weather conditions. We developed instruments to assess the quality of this site for photometry in the visible and to detect and characterize variable objects through the Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets (ASTEP) project. We present the full analysis of four winters of data collected with ASTEP South, a 10 cm refractor pointing continuously toward the celestial south pole. We improved the instrument over the years and developed specific data reduction methods. We achieved nearly continuous observations over the winters. We measure an average sky background of 20 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ in the 579-642 nm bandpass. We built the lightcurves of 6000 stars and developed a model to infer the photometric quality of Dome C from the lightcurves themselves. The weather is photometric $67.1\pm4.2$ % of the time and veiled $21.8\pm2.0$ % of the time. The remaining time corresponds to poor quality data or winter storms. We analyzed the lightcurves of $σ$ Oct and HD 184465 and find that the amplitude of their main frequency varies by a factor of 3.5 and 6.7 over the four years, respectively. We also identify 34 new variable stars and eight new eclipsing binaries with periods ranging from 0.17 to 81 days. The phase coverage that we achieved with ASTEP South is exceptional for a ground-based instrument and the data quality enables the detection and study of variable objects. These results demonstrate the high quality of Dome C for photometry in the visible and for time series observations in general. : 23 pages, 23 figures, A&A in press Text Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica South pole South pole DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Antarctic The Antarctic South Pole |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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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 Crouzet, N. Chapellier, E. Guillot, T. Mékarnia, D. Agabi, A. Fanteï-Caujolle, Y. Abe, L. Rivet, J. -P. Schmider, F. -X. Fressin, F. Bondoux, E. Challita, Z. Pouzenc, C. Valbousquet, F. Bayliss, D. Bonhomme, S. Daban, J. -B. Gouvret, C. Blazit, A. Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica |
topic_facet |
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP FOS Physical sciences |
description |
Dome C in Antarctica is a promising site for photometric observations thanks to the continuous night during the Antarctic winter and favorable weather conditions. We developed instruments to assess the quality of this site for photometry in the visible and to detect and characterize variable objects through the Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets (ASTEP) project. We present the full analysis of four winters of data collected with ASTEP South, a 10 cm refractor pointing continuously toward the celestial south pole. We improved the instrument over the years and developed specific data reduction methods. We achieved nearly continuous observations over the winters. We measure an average sky background of 20 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ in the 579-642 nm bandpass. We built the lightcurves of 6000 stars and developed a model to infer the photometric quality of Dome C from the lightcurves themselves. The weather is photometric $67.1\pm4.2$ % of the time and veiled $21.8\pm2.0$ % of the time. The remaining time corresponds to poor quality data or winter storms. We analyzed the lightcurves of $σ$ Oct and HD 184465 and find that the amplitude of their main frequency varies by a factor of 3.5 and 6.7 over the four years, respectively. We also identify 34 new variable stars and eight new eclipsing binaries with periods ranging from 0.17 to 81 days. The phase coverage that we achieved with ASTEP South is exceptional for a ground-based instrument and the data quality enables the detection and study of variable objects. These results demonstrate the high quality of Dome C for photometry in the visible and for time series observations in general. : 23 pages, 23 figures, A&A in press |
format |
Text |
author |
Crouzet, N. Chapellier, E. Guillot, T. Mékarnia, D. Agabi, A. Fanteï-Caujolle, Y. Abe, L. Rivet, J. -P. Schmider, F. -X. Fressin, F. Bondoux, E. Challita, Z. Pouzenc, C. Valbousquet, F. Bayliss, D. Bonhomme, S. Daban, J. -B. Gouvret, C. Blazit, A. |
author_facet |
Crouzet, N. Chapellier, E. Guillot, T. Mékarnia, D. Agabi, A. Fanteï-Caujolle, Y. Abe, L. Rivet, J. -P. Schmider, F. -X. Fressin, F. Bondoux, E. Challita, Z. Pouzenc, C. Valbousquet, F. Bayliss, D. Bonhomme, S. Daban, J. -B. Gouvret, C. Blazit, A. |
author_sort |
Crouzet, N. |
title |
Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica |
title_short |
Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica |
title_full |
Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica |
title_fullStr |
Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica |
title_full_unstemmed |
Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica |
title_sort |
four winters of photometry with astep south at dome c, antarctica |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1807.10807 https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10807 |
geographic |
Antarctic The Antarctic South Pole |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic The Antarctic South Pole |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica South pole South pole |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica South pole South pole |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732565 |
op_rights |
arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1807.10807 https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732565 |
_version_ |
1766264746053468160 |