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 provide the best seeing conditions, the darkest skies and the most transparent atmosphere of any earth-based observing site. Astronomical activities are now underway at four plateau sites: the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Concordia Station at Dome C, Kunlun Station at Dome A and Fuji Station at Dome F, in addition to long duration ballooning from the coastal station of McMurdo. Astronomy conducted includes optical, IR, THz & sub-mm, measurements of the CMBR, solar, as well as high energy astrophysics involving measurement of cosmic rays, gamma rays and neutrinos. Antarctica is also the richest source of meteorites on our planet. An extensive range of site testing measurements have been made over the high plateau. We summarise the facets of Antarctica that are driving developments in astronomy, and review the results of the site testing experiments undertaken to quantify those characteristics of the plateau relevant for it pursuit. We outline the historical development of the astronomy on the continent, and then review the principal scientific results to have emerged over the past three decades of activity in the discipline. We discuss how science is conducted in Antarctica, and in particular the difficulties, as well as the advantages, faced by astronomers seeking to bring their experiments there. We also review some of the political issues that will be encountered, both at national and international level. Finally, we discuss where Antarctic astronomy may be heading in the coming decade, in particular plans for IR & THz astronomy, including new facilities being considered for these wavebands at high plateau stations.
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 vapor, low sky background, and continuous dark time, etc. In this review paper, we present a complete picture of the development of astronomy at Dome A from the very beginning, review recent progress in time-domain astronomy, demonstrate exciting results of the site testing, and address the challenges in instrumentation. Currently proposed projects are briefly d…
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 than one-millionth of the solar disk brightness. Few places match such requirement for ground-based, out-of-eclipse coronagraphic measurements. A candidate coronagraphic site is the Dome C plateau in Antarctica. In this paper, we show the first results of the sky brightness measurements at Dome C with the Extreme Solar Coronagraphy Antarctic Program Experime…
The 0.5\,m Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3) were designed for time-domain optical/infrared astronomy. They are located in Dome~A, Antarctica, where they can take advantage of the continuous dark time during winter. Since the site is unattended in winter, everything for the operation, from observing to data reduction, had to be fully automated. Here, we present a brief overview of the AST3 project and some of its unique characteristics due to its location in Antarctica. We summarise the various components of the survey, including the customized hardware and software, that make complete automa…
The Chinese Small Telescope ARray (hereinafter CSTAR) is the first Chinese astronomical instrument on the Antarctic ice cap. The low temperature and low pressure testing of the data acquisition system was carried out in a laboratory refrigerator and on the 4500m Pamirs high plateau, respectively. The results from the final four nights of test observations demonstrated that CSTAR was ready for operation at Dome A, Antarctica. In this paper we present a description of CSTAR and the performance derived from the test observations.
We present an analysis of meteorological data from the second generation of the Kunlun Automated Weather Station (KLAWS-2G) at Dome A, Antarctica during 2015 and 2016. We find that a strong temperature inversion exists for all the elevations up to 14 m that KLAWS-2G can reach, and lasts for more than 10 hours for 50% or more of the time when temperature inversion occurs. The average wind speeds at 4 m elevation are 4.2 m/s and 3.8 m/s during 2015 and 2016, respectively. The strong temperature inversion and moderate wind speed lead to a shallow turbulent boundary layer height at Dome A. By anal…
Based on the observations of the Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR), the i band observing conditions at Antarctic Dome A have been investigated. The over all variations of sky brightness and transparency are calculated and subsequently cloud cover, contributions to the sky background from various factors including aurorae are derived. The median sky brightness of moonless clear nights is about 20.5 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ in the SDSS i band at the South Celestial Pole, which contains the diffused Galactic light of about 0.06 mag. There are no thick clouds in the year of 2008. Relatively strong au…
AST3-1 is the second-generation wide-field optical photometric telescope dedicated to time domain astronomy at Dome A, Antarctica. Here we present the results of $i$ band images survey from AST3-1 towards one Galactic disk field. Based on time-series photometry of 92,583 stars, 560 variable stars were detected with $i$ magnitude $\leq$ 16.5 mag during eight days of observations; 339 of these are previously unknown variables. We tentatively classify the 560 variables as 285 eclipsing binaries (EW, EB, EA), 27 pulsating variable stars ($δ$~Scuti, $γ$~Doradus, $δ$~Cephei variable and RR Lyrae sta…
The optical turbulence above Dome C in winter is mainly concentrated in the first tens of meters above the ground. Properties of this so-called surface layer (SL) were investigated during the period 2007-2012 by a set of sonics anemometers placed on a 45 m high tower. We present the results of this long-term monitoring of the refractive index structure constant Cn2 within the SL, and confirm its thickness of 35m. We give statistics of the contribution of the SL to the seeing and coherence time. We also investigate properties of large scale structure functions of the temperature and show eviden…
Observing sites at the East-Antarctic plateau are considered to provide exceptional conditions for astronomy. The aim of this work is to assess its potential for detecting transiting extrasolar planets through a comparison and combination of photometric data from Antarctica with time series from a midlatitude site. During 2010, the two small aperture telescopes ASTEP 400 (Dome C) and BEST II (Chile) together performed an observing campaign of two target fields and the transiting planet WASP-18b. For the latter, a bright star, Dome C appears to yield an advantageous signal-to-noise ratio. For f…
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 atmospheric seeing conditions for high spatial resolution observations. The coronagraphic performances obtained from laboratory experiments and numerical models have been compared with those measured from daytime on-sky data recorded on bright single and multiple stars: Canopus (HD 45348), and alpha Centauri (HD 128620J). No correction system was used (adaptive …
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 temperatures at 2m and 14.5m are $-54^{\circ}$C and $-46^{\circ}$C, respectively. We find that a strong temperature inversion existed at all heights for more than 70% of the time, and the temperature inversion typically lasts longer than 25 hours, indicating an extremely stable atmosphere. The temperature gradient is larger at lower elevations than higher ele…
Dome A on the Antarctic plateau is likely one of the best observing sites on Earth thanks to the excellent atmospheric conditions present at the site during the long polar winter night. We present high-cadence time-series aperture photometry of 10,000 stars with i<14.5 mag located in a 23 square-degree region centered on the south celestial pole. The photometry was obtained with one of the CSTAR telescopes during 128 days of the 2008 Antarctic winter. We used this photometric data set to derive site statistics for Dome A and to search for variable stars. Thanks to the nearly-uninterrupted syno…
Dome C in Antarctica is a promising site for photometric observations thanks to the continuous night during the Antarctic winter and favorable weather conditions. We developed instruments to assess the quality of this site for photometry in the visible and to detect and characterize variable objects through the Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets (ASTEP) project. We present the full analysis of four winters of data collected with ASTEP South, a 10 cm refractor pointing continuously toward the celestial south pole. We improved the instrument over the years and developed specific data red…
ASTEP (Antarctica Search for Transiting ExoPlanets) is a pilot project that aims at searching and characterizing transiting exoplanets from Dome C in Antarctica and to qualify this site for photometry in the visible. Two instruments were installed at Dome C and ran for six winters in total. The analysis of the collected data is nearly complete. We present the operation of the instruments, and the technical challenges, limitations, and possible solutions in light of the data quality. The instruments performed continuous observations during the winters. Human interventions are required mainly fo…
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 the Chajnantor area in Chile. In this context, we report on measurements of the sky opacity at 200 um over a period of three years at the French-Italian station, Concordia, at Dome C, Antarctica. We also present some solutions to the challenges of operating in the harsh polar environ- ment. Dome C offers exceptional conditions in terms of absolute atmospheric …
The terahertz and far-infrared (FIR) band, from approximately 0.3 THz to 15 THz (1 mm to 20 micron), is important for astrophysics as the thermal radiation of much of the universe peaks at these wavelengths and many spectral lines that trace the cycle of interstellar matter also lie within this band. However, water vapor renders the terrestrial atmosphere opaque to this frequency band over nearly all of the Earth's surface. Early radiometric measurements below 1 THz at Dome A, the highest point of the cold and dry Antarctic ice sheet, suggest that it may offer the best possible access for grou…
Seeing, the angular size of stellar images blurred by atmospheric turbulence, is a critical parameter used to assess the quality of astronomical sites. Median values at the best mid-latitude sites are generally in the range of 0.6--0.8\,arcsec. Sites on the Antarctic plateau are characterized by comparatively-weak turbulence in the free-atmosphere above a strong but thin boundary layer. The median seeing at Dome C is estimated to be 0.23--0.36 arcsec above a boundary layer that has a typical height of 30\,m. At Dome A and F, the only previous seeing measurements were made during daytime. Here …
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 traverse to Dome A in January, 2009. We present here the measurements of sky brightness with the Gattini ultra-large field of view (90 deg x 90 deg) in the photometric B-, V-, and R-bands, cloud cover statistics measured during the 2009 winter season, and an estimate of the sky transparency. A cumulative probability distribution indicates that the darkest 10% of th…
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 characterized by a strong cyclonic jet centered above the polar high. In a recent study of our group (Hagelin et al., 2008) of four different sites in the Antarctic internal plateau (South Pole, Dome C, Dome A and Dome F), it was made the hypothesis that the wind speed strength in the upper atmosphere should be related to the distance of the site to the cent…
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 $i$ 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 t…
In 2008 January the 24th Chinese expedition team successfully deployed the Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) to DomeA, the highest point on the Antarctic plateau. CSTAR consists of four 14.5cm optical telescopes, each with a different filter (g, r, i and open) and has a 4.5degree x 4.5degree field of view (FOV). It operates robotically as part of the Plateau Observatory, PLATO, with each telescope taking an image every 30 seconds throughout the year whenever it is dark. During 2008, CSTAR #1 performed almost flawlessly, acquiring more than 0.3 million i-band images for a total integration …
The three Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3) aim to carry out time domain imaging survey at Dome A, Antarctica. The first of the three telescopes (AST3-1) was successfully deployed on January 2012. AST3-1 is a 500\,mm aperture modified Schmidt telescope with a 680\,mm diameter primary mirror. AST3-1 is equipped with a SDSS $i$ filter and a 10k $\times$ 10k frame transfer CCD camera, reduced to 5k $\times$ 10k by electronic shuttering, resulting in a 4.3 deg$^2$ field-of-view. To verify the capability of AST3-1 for a variety of science goals, extensive commissioning was carried out between Marc…
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. Heating of electronic subsystems is a necessity, but solutions must be found to avoid the turbulence induced by temperature fluctua- tions on the optical paths. ASTEP 400 is a 40 cm Newton telescope installed at the Concordia station, Dome C since 2010 for photometric observations of fields of stars and their exoplanets. While the telescope is designed to spread …
In two recent papers the mesoscale model Meso-NH, joint with the Astro-Meso-NH package, has been validated at Dome C, Antarctica, for the characterization of the optical turbulence. It has been shown that the meteorological parameters (temperature and wind speed, from which the optical turbulence depends on) as well as the Cn2 profiles above Dome C were correctly statistically reproduced. The three most important derived parameters that characterize the optical turbulence above the internal antarctic plateau: the surface layer thickness, the seeing in the free-atmosphere and in the total atmos…
The Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) has observed an area around the Celestial South Pole at Dome A since 2008. About $20,000$ light curves in the i band were obtained lasting from March to July, 2008. The photometric precision achieves about 4 mmag at i = 7.5 and 20 mmag at i = 12 within a 30 s exposure time. These light curves are analyzed using Lomb--Scargle, Phase Dispersion Minimization, and Box Least Squares methods to search for periodic signals. False positives may appear as a variable signature caused by contaminating stars and the observation mode of CSTAR. Therefore the period …
$J$ and $H$ band sky brightness measurements from polar day to polar night at Dome A, Antarctica
School of Physics and Astronomy, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学物理学院）；National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；School of Physics, University of New South Wales（新南威尔士大学物理学院）；CSST Science Center for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area（中国空间站科学中心粤港澳大湾区分中心）
Atmospheric transmission from Dome A, Antarctica, presents new possibilities in the field of terahertz astronomy, where space telescopes have been the only observational tools until now. Using atmospheric transmission measurements from Dome A with a Fourier transform spectrometer, transmission spectra and long-term stabilities have been analyzed at 1.461 THz, 3.393 THz, 5.786 THz and 7.1 THz, which show that important atmospheric windows for terahertz astronomy open for a reasonable length of time in the winter season. With large aperture terahertz telescopes and interferometers at Dome A, hig…
We present long term site testing statistics obtained at Dome C, Antarctica with various experiments deployed within the Astroconcordia programme since 2003. We give values of integrated turbulence parameters in the visible at ground level and above the surface layer, vertical profiles of the structure constant Cn2 and a statistics of the thickness of the turbulent surface layer.
We present a reanalysis of several years of DIMM data at the site of Dome C, Antarctica, to provide measurements of the coherence time $τ_0$. Statistics and seasonal behaviour of $τ_0$ are given at two heights above the ground, 3m and 8m, for the wavelength $λ=500$nm. We found an annual median value of $2.9$ms at the height of 8m. A few measurements could also be obtained at the height of 20m and give a median value of 6ms during the period June--September. For the first time, we provide measurements of $τ_0$ in daytime during the summer, which appears to show the same time dependence as the s…
Dome A in Antarctica has many characteristics that make it an excellent site for astronomical observations, from the optical to the terahertz. Quantitative site testing is still needed to confirm the site's properties. In this paper, we present a statistical analysis of cloud cover and aurora contamination from the Kunlun Cloud and Aurora Monitor (KLCAM). KLCAM is an automatic, unattended all-sky camera aiming for long-term monitoring of the usable observing time and optical sky background at Dome~A. It was installed at Dome~A in January 2017, worked through the austral winter, and collected o…
The latest MERRA-2 reanalysis of the modern satellite measurements provides unprecedented uniformity and fidelity for the atmospheric data. In this paper, these data are used to evaluate five sites for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) observations. These include two established sites (South Pole and Chajnantor, Atacama), and three new sites (Ali, Tibet; Dome A, Antarctica; and Summit Camp, Greenland). Atmospheric properties including precipitable water vapor (PWV), sky brightness temperature fluctuations, ice and liquid water paths are derived and compared. Dome A emerges to be the best among those e…
The Antarctic plateau contains the best sites on earth for many forms of astronomy, but none of the existing bases was selected with astronomy as the primary motivation. In this article, we try to systematically compare the merits of potential observatory sites.We include South Pole, Domes A, C, and F, and also Ridge B (running northeast from Dome A), and what we call "Ridge A" (running southwest from Dome A). Our analysis combines satellite data, published results, and atmospheric models, to compare the boundary layer, weather, aurorae, airglow, precipitable water vapor, thermal sky emission,…
It has already been demonstrated that a mesoscale meteorological model such as Meso-NH is highly reliable in reproducing 3D maps of optical turbulence. Preliminary measurements above the Antarctic Plateau have so far indicated a pretty good value for the seeing: around 0.3" at Dome C. However some uncertainties remain. That's why our group is focusing on a detailed study of the atmospheric flow and turbulence in the internal Antarctic Plateau. Our intention is to use the Meso-NH model to do predictions of the atmospheric flow and the corresponding optical turbulence in the internal plateau. Th…
We compute the polarized signal from atmospheric molecular oxygen due to Zeeman effect in the Earth magnetic field for various sites suitable for CMB measurements such as South Pole, Dome C (Antarctica) and Atacama desert (Chile). We present maps of this signal for those sites and show their typical elevation and azimuth dependencies. We find a typical circularly polarized signal (V Stokes parameter) level of 50 - 300 μK at 90 GHz when looking at the zenith; Atacama site shows the lowest emission while Dome C site presents the lowest gradient in polarized brightness temperature (0.3 μK/deg at …
This paper analyses 3.5 years of site testing data obtained at Dome C, Antarctica, based on measurements obtained with three DIMMs located at three different elevations. Basic statistics of the seeing and the isoplanatic angle are given, as well as the characteristic time of temporal fluctuations of these two parameters, which we found to around 30 minutes at 8 m. The 3 DIMMs are exploited as a profiler of the surface layer, and provide a robust estimation of its statistical properties. It appears to have a very sharp upper limit (less than 1 m). The fraction of time spent by each telescope ab…
The reliability of astronomical observations at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths closely depends on a low vertical content of water vapor as well as on high atmospheric emission stability. Although Concordia station at Dome C (Antarctica) enjoys good observing conditions in this atmospheric spectral windows, as shown by preliminary site-testing campaigns at different bands and in, not always, time overlapped periods, a dedicated instrument able to continuously determine atmospheric performance for a wide spectral range is not yet planned. In the absence of such measurements, in this p…
These last years ground-based astronomy has been looking towards Antarctica, especially its summits and the internal continental plateau where the optical turbulence (OT) appears to be confined in a shallow layer close to the surface. Preliminary measurements have so far indicated pretty good value for the seeing above 30-35 m: 0.36" (Agabi et al. 2006), 0.27" (Lawrence et al. 2004) and 0.3" (Trinquet et al. 2008) at Dome C. Site testing campaigns are however extremely expensive, instruments provide only local measurements and atmospheric modeling might represent a step ahead towards the searc…
The most important limitation for ground-based submillimetre (submm) astronomy is the broad-band absorption of the total water vapour in the atmosphere above an observation site, often expressed as the Precipitable Water Vapour (PWV). A long-term statistic on the PWV is thus mandatory to characterize the quality of an existing or potential site for observational submm-astronomy. In this study we present a three-year statistic (2008-2010) of the PWV for ground-based telescope sites all around the world and for stratospheric altitudes relevant for SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Far-infrare…
The recent observation by the IceCube neutrino observatory of an astrophysical flux of neutrinos represents the "first light" in the nascent field of neutrino astronomy. The observed diffuse neutrino flux seems to suggest a much larger level of hadronic activity in the non-thermal universe than previously thought and suggests a rich discovery potential for a larger neutrino observatory. This document presents a vision for an substantial expansion of the current IceCube detector, IceCube-Gen2, including the aim of instrumenting a $10\,\mathrm{km}^3$ volume of clear glacial ice at the South Pole…
The possibility to observe transiting exoplanets from Dome C in Antarctica provides immense benefits: stable weather conditions, limited atmospheric turbulence, and a night that lasts almost three months due to the austral winter. However, this site also presents significant limitations, such as limited access for maintenance and internet speeds of only a few KB/s. This latter factor means that the approximately 6 TB of data collected annually must be processed on site automatically, with only final data products being sent once a day to Europe. In this context, we present the current state of…
The measurement of ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrinos (E $>$ \SI{e16}{eV}) opens a new field of astronomy with the potential to reveal the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays especially if combined with observations in the electromagnetic spectrum and gravitational waves. The ARIANNA pilot detector explores the detection of UHE neutrinos with a surface array of independent radio detector stations in Antarctica which allows for a cost-effective instrumentation of large volumes. Twelve stations are currently operating successfully at the Moore's Bay site (Ross Ice Shelf) in Antarctica and at…
The UW Mobile Planetarium Project is a student driven effort to bring astronomy to high schools and the Seattle community. We designed and built an optics solution to project WorldWide Telescope in an inflatable planetarium from a laptop and off-the-shelf HD projector. In our first six months of operation, undergraduates at the UW gave planetarium shows to over 1500 people and 150 high school students created and presented their own astronomy projects in our dome, at their school. This document aims to share the technical aspects behind the project in order for others to replicate or adapt our…
PILOT (the Pathfinder for an International Large Optical Telescope) is a proposed 2.5 m optical/infrared telescope to be located at Dome C on the Antarctic plateau. Conditions at Dome C are known to be exceptional for astronomy. The seeing (above ~30 m height), coherence time, and isoplanatic angle are all twice s good as at typical mid-latitude sites, while the water-vapour column, and the atmosphere and telescope thermal emission are all an order of magnitude better. These conditions enable a unique scientific capability for PILOT, which is addressed in this series of papers. The current pap…
Mesoscale model such as Meso-Nh have proven to be highly reliable in reproducing 3D maps of optical turbulence (see Refs. 1, 2, 3, 4) above mid-latitude astronomical sites. These last years ground-based astronomy has been looking towards Antarctica. Especially its summits and the Internal Continental Plateau where the optical turbulence appears to be confined in a shallow layer close to the icy surface. Preliminary measurements have so far indicated pretty good value for the seeing above 30-35 m: 0.36" (see Ref. 5) and 0.27" (see Refs. 6, 7) at Dome C. Site testing campaigns are however extrem…
