Exoplanets in the Antarctic Sky. II. 116 Transiting Exoplanet Candidates Found by AST3-II (CHESPA) within the Southern CVZ of TESS

• Published in: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
• Main Authors: Zhang, Hui, Yu, Zhouyi, Liang, Ensi, Yang, Ming, Ashley, Michael C.B., Cui, Xiangqun, Du, Fujia, Fu, Jianning, Gong, Xuefei, Gu, Bozhong, Hu, Yi, Jiang, Peng, Liu, Huigen, Lawrence, Jon, Liu, Qiang, Li, Xiaoyan, Li, Zhengyang, Ma, Bin, Mould, Jeremy, Shang, Zhaohui, Suntzeff, Nicholas B., Tao, Charling, Tian, Qiguo, Tinney, C.G., Uddin, Syed A., Wang, Lifan, Wang, Songhu, Wang, Xiaofeng, Wei, Peng, Wright, Duncan, Wu, Xuefeng, Wittenmyer, Robert A., Xu, Lingzhe, Yang, Shi-Hai, Yu, Ce, Yuan, Xiangyan, Zheng, Jessica, Zhou, Hongyan, Zhou, Ji-Lin, Zhu, Zhenxi
• Other Authors: Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille (CPPM), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules du CNRS (IN2P3)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2019
• Subjects: [PHYS.ASTR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]; [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-INS-DET]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-02017058; https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/aaf583

International audience We report first results from the CHinese Exoplanet Searching Program fromAntarctica (CHESPA)---a wide-field high-resolution photometric survey fortransiting exoplanets carried out using telescopes of the AST3 (AntarcticSurvey Telescopes times 3) project. There are now three telescopes (AST3-I,AST3-II, and CSTAR-II) operating at Dome A---the highest point on the AntarcticPlateau---in a fully automatic and remote mode to exploit the superb observingconditions of the site, and its long and uninterrupted polar nights. The searchfor transiting exoplanets is one of the key projects for AST3. During theAustral winters of 2016 and 2017 we used the AST3-II telescope to survey a setof target fields near the southern ecliptic pole, falling within the continuousviewing zone of the TESS mission \citep{Ricker10}. The first data release ofthe 2016 data, including images, catalogs and lightcurves of 26578 bright stars($7.5\le i \le15$) was presented in \citet{Zhang18}. The best precision, asmeasured by the RMS of the lightcurves at the optimum magnitude of the survey($i=10$), is around 2\,mmag. We detect 222 objects with plausible transitsignals from these data, 116 of which are plausible transiting exoplanetcandidates according to their stellar properties as given by the TESS InputCatalog \citep{Stassun17}, Gaia DR2 \citep{Gaia18} and TESS-HERMES spectroscopy\citep{Sharma18}. With the first data release from TESS expected in late 2018,this candidate list will be a timely for improving the rejection of potentialfalse positives.