The Antarctica Schmidt Telescopes project (also known as Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3)) is a joint project between

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

(TAMU) and the

Beijing Astronomical Observatory Beijing Astronomical Observatory (BAO) is an observatory located around 150 kilometres northeast of Beijing, China. It was founded in 1958 and is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Ac ...

to build three small (50cm aperture) wide-field telescopes at the

Antarctic Kunlun Station Kunlun Station () is the southernmost of four Chinese research stations in Antarctica. When it is occupied during the summer, it is the second-southernmost research base in Antarctica, behind only the American Amundsen–Scott South Pole Stati ...

near

Dome A Dome A or Dome Argus is the loftiest ice dome on the Antarctic Plateau, located inland. It is thought to be the coldest naturally occurring place on Earth, with temperatures believed to reach . It is the highest ice feature in Antarctica, consis ...

in Antarctica; Lifan Wang at TAMU is the main instigator of the project. These telescopes will take advantage of the low background and the long Antarctic nights to provide high-accuracy photometric time series for finding

extrasolar planets An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

, and to observe wide fields in the infrared to look for new

supernovae A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a ...

. The first of three Antarctic Survey Telescopes AST3-1, was installed at the

in April 2012. 2nd and 3rd telescopes will be installed in 2013 and 2014 An update was published indicating that the first telescope operated for only a few weeks in 2012 before a power failure, and was repaired in 2013, but the CCD controller proceeded to fail after further data collection. The AST3-2 unit has seen several design revisions to improve reliability in the harsh Antarctic environment, and was tested over the 2013-2014 winter in Mohe, China before being sent to the field.

References

{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System, Education, Science Optical telescopes Astronomical telescopes and observatories in the Antarctic 2012 establishments in Antarctica

See also

References