Data Release of the AST3-2 Automatic Survey from Dome A, Antarctica

• Published in: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Main Authors: Yang, Xu, Hu, Yi, Shang, Zhaohui, Ma, Bin, Ashley, Michael C.B., Cui, Xiangqun, Du, Fujia, Fu, Jianning, Gong, Xuefei, Gu, Bozhong, Jiang, Peng, Li, Xiaoyan, Li, Zhengyang, Tao, Charling, Wang, Lifan, Xu, Lingzhe, Yang, Shi-Hai, Yu, Ce, Yuan, Xiangyan, 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 2023
• Subjects: Surveys; Catalogues; Stars: variables: general; [PHYS.ASTR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]; Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03991781; https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad498

International audience AST3-2 is the second of the three Antarctic Survey Telescopes, aimed at wide-field time-domain optical astronomy. It is located at Dome A, Antarctica, which is by many measures the best optical astronomy site on the Earth's surface. Here we present the data from the AST3-2 automatic survey in 2016 and the photometry results. The median 5$\sigma$ limiting magnitude in $i$-band is 17.8 mag and the light curve precision is 4 mmag for bright stars. The data release includes photometry for over 7~million stars, from which over 3,500 variable stars were detected, with 70 of them newly discovered. We classify these new variables into different types by combining their light curve features with stellar properties from surveys such as StarHorse.