The sky brightness and transparency in i-band at Dome A, Antarctica
Abstract
The i-band observing conditions at Dome A on the Antarctic plateau have been investigated using data acquired during 2008 with the Chinese Small Telescope ARray. The sky brightness, variations in atmospheric transparency, cloud cover, and the presence of aurorae are obtained from these images. The median sky brightness of moonless clear nights is 20.5 mag arcsec^{-2} in the SDSS band at the South Celestial Pole (which includes a contribution of about 0.06 mag from diffuse Galactic light). The median over all Moon phases in the Antarctic winter is about 19.8 mag arcsec^{-2}. There were no thick clouds in 2008. We model contributions of the Sun and the Moon to the sky background to obtain the relationship between the sky brightness and transparency. Aurorae are identified by comparing the observed sky brightness to the sky brightness expected from this model. About 2% of the images are affected by relatively strong aurorae.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1001.4951,
title = {The sky brightness and transparency in i-band at Dome A, Antarctica},
author = {Hu Zou and Xu Zhou and Zhaoji Jiang and M. C. B. Ashley and Xiangqun Cui and Longlong Feng and Xuefei Gong and Jingyao Hu and C. A. Kulesa and J. S. Lawrence and Genrong Liu and D. M. Luong-Van and Jun Ma and A. M. Moore and Weijia Qin and Zhaohui Shang and J. W. V. Storey and Bo Sun and T. Travouillon and C. K. Walker and Jiali Wang and Lifan Wang and Jianghua Wu and Zhenyu Wu and Lirong Xia and Jun Yan and Ji Yang and Huigen Yang and Yongqiang Yao and Xiangyan Yuan and D. York and Zhanhai Zhang and Zhenxi Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.4951},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
There are 1 Latex file and 14 figures accepted by AJ