Dome A site testing and future plans

¹ Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology, Nanjing 210042, China
² Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy
³ Physics Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
⁴ National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012, China
⁵ Purple Mountain Observatory, Nanjing 210008, China
⁶ School of Physics, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia
⁷ Solar Mobility Pty Ltd., Thornleigh, NSW 2120, Australia
⁸ Physics Department, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
⁹ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Engineering, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
¹¹ Anglo-Australian Observatory, NSW 1710, Australia
¹² Polar Research Institute of China, Pudong, Shanghai 200136, China
¹³ School of Physics, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QL, UK
¹⁴ Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
¹⁵ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹⁶ Thirty Meter Telescope Project, Pasadena, CA 91107, USA
¹⁷ Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300074, China
¹⁸ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and The Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Corresponding author: xfgong@niaot.ac.cn

Abstract

In January 2005, members of a Chinese expedition team were the first humans to visit Dome A on the Antarctic plateau, a site predicted to be one of the very best astronomical sites on earth.
In 2006, the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy (CCAA) was founded to promote the development of astronomy in Antarctica, especially at Dome A. CCAA has since taken part in two traverses to Dome A, organized by the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), in the austral summers of 2007/2008 and 2008/2009. These traverses resulted in the installation of many site-testing and science instruments, supported by the PLATO observatory. The Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) has produced excellent results from Dome A.
Our future plans include further site-testing work, and the following full-scale science instruments: three 0.5-m Antarctic Schmidt Telescopes (AST3), and a proposed 4-m telescope for wide-field infrared high spatial-resolution surveys. The first AST3 telescope is under construction and is scheduled for installation in 2011.