Science with ICE-T: Exoplanets and stellar/solar activity

¹ Astrophysical Institute Potsdam (AIP), Potsdam, Germany
² INAF – Catania Astrophysical Observatory, Catania, Italy
³ Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Bremerhaven, Germany
⁴ University of St-.Andrews, Scotland, UK
⁵ Istituto Astronomico, Universtà degli Studi Padova, Padova, Italy
⁶ INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy
⁷ IEEC Barcelona, Catalonya, Spain
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Perugia, Perugia, Italy

Abstract

We present the science case for ICE-T, the International Concordia Explorer Telescope, a double telescope optimized for ultra-high and ultra wide field optical time-series photometry from Dome C. ICE-T consists of two 60 cm 8°×8°-FOV Schmidt telescopes for Sloan g and i photometry and one independent 25 cm, solar, full-disk, Ca ii-K imaging telescope on a single mount. ICE-T is therefore operable during night and day. A 28 cm narrow-field Maksutov spectrophotometric telescope for night-time aerosol measurements (TAVERN-SP) will be provided by AWI early on and operated in parallel with IRAIT and later with ICE-T. The low scintillation noise and the long continuous darkness are among the unique properties for high precision optical time-series photometry.