Related papers: Some results after 10 years of site testing at Con…
Over the past few years a major effort has been put into the exploration of potential sites for the deployment of submillimetre astronomical facilities. Amongst the most important sites are Dome C and Dome A on the Antarctic Plateau, and…
Antarctica provides a unique environment for astronomy. The cold, dry and stable air found above the high plateau, as well as the pure ice below, offers new opportunities across the photon & particle spectrum. The summits of the plateau…
ICE-T (International Concordia Explorer Telescope) is a double 60 cm f/1.1 photometric robotic telescope, on a parallactic mount, which will operate at Dome C, in the long Antarctic night, aiming to investigate exoplanets and activity of…
The low infrared background and high atmospheric transparency are the principal advantages of Antarctic Plateau sites for astronomy. However, the poor seeing (between one and three arcseconds) negates much of the sensitivity improvements…
The evaluation of sky characteristics plays a fundamental role for many astrophysical experiments and ground-based observations. In solar physics, the main requirement for such observations is a very low sky brightness value, that is, less…
The summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A, is proving to be an excellent site for optical, NIR, and THz astronomical observations. GATTINI was a wide-field camera installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led…
We present an analysis of the meteorological data collected at Dome A, Antarctica by the Kunlun Automated Weather Station, including temperatures and wind speeds at eight elevations above the snow surface between 0m and 14.5m. The average…
Antarctica offers unique conditions for ground-based observations, such as low sky background in the infrared, improved seeing, and low turbulence and scintillation noise. These properties are particularly beneficial to imaging, precision…
During winter and springtime, the flow above Antarctica at high altitude (upper troposphere and stratosphere) is dominated by the presence of a vortex centered above the continent. It lasts typically from August to November. This vortex is…
The atmospheric properties above three sites on the Internal Antarctic Plateau are investigated for astronomical applications calculating the monthly median of the analysis-data from ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather…
From the South Pole, microthermal turbulence within a narrow surface boundary layer some 200m thick provides the dominant contribution to the astronomical seeing. We present results for the seeing at a wavelength of 2.4um. The narrow…
Preliminary site testing at Dome C (Antarctica) is presented, using both Automatic Weather Station (AWS) meteorological data (1986-1993) and Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) measurements made by the authors. A comparison with South Pole and…
Due to the recent interest shown by astronomers towards the Antarctic Plateau as a potential site for large astronomical facilities, we assisted in the last years to a strengthening of site testing activities in this region, particularly at…
Dome A in Antarctica has been demonstrated to be the best site on earth for optical, infrared, and terahertz astronomical observations by more and more evidence, such as excellent free-atmosphere seeing, extremely low perceptible water…
The installation and operation of a telescope in Antarctica represent particular challenges, in particular the requirement to operate at extremely cold temperatures, to cope with rapid temperature fluctuations and to prevent frosting.…
The atmospheric properties above three sites (Dome C, Dome A and the South Pole) on the Internal Antarctic Plateau are investigated for astronomical applications using the monthly median of the analyses from ECMWF (the European Centre for…
The internal antarctic plateau revealed in the last years to be a site with interesting potentialities for the astronomical applications due to the extreme dryness and low temperatures, the typical high altitude of the plateau, the weak…
Atmospheric emission is a dominant source of disturbance in ground-based astronomy at mm wavelengths. The Antarctic plateau is recognized to be an ideal site for mm and sub-mm observations, and the French/Italian base of Dome C is among the…
We report on the first daytime on-sky results of a Phase Knife stellar Coronagraph operated in the visible from the French-Italian Concordia station at Dome C of Antarctica. This site has proven in the last few years to offer excellent…
Preliminary site testing datasets suggest that Dome C in Antarctica is one of the best sites on Earth for astronomical observations in the 200 to 500 micron regime, i.e. for far-infrared (FIR) and submillimetre (submm) astronomy. We present…