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The Antarctic Survey Telescope has successfully runned for the whole antarctic winter in an unattended observation mode
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Update time: 2017-11-10
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Antarctic Survey Telescope AST3 is second generation of Antarctic Astronomical Optical equipment including three sets of pupil diameter of 500mm survey telescope with large field of view and three different filtersGRI band),which is remote-controlled in an unattended observation mode

NIAOT is responsible for development of main body of the telescope installed in Chinese Antarctic Kunlun station altitude 4100matmospheric pressure 0.57atm)。

AST3 adopts innovative design of catadioptric optical system with the large field of view 8 square degrees and 680mm primary mirror

AST3 has not only excellent image quality as classical Schmidt system but also advantages of short-tubecompact structureeliminating distortion and atmospheric dispersion correction

AST3-2 is second Antarctic Survey Telescope, which adopted new driving method with high precisionlow power consumption and high reliability

AST3-2 established fault managemen system with ability of early warning and self diagnosis

On January 2017, the expedition team conducted a careful maintenance of AST3-2For first time AST3-2 has automatically runned for the whole antarctic winter in an unattended observation mode under Antarctic extreme environment from -350 to -750 )。

AST3-2 successfully conducted continuous observation of supernova survey and searching of exoplanets so that a large number of extrasolar planets candidates with high confidence were found

Particularly exciting achievement was to detect "optical counterpart" of gravitational waves coming from the merger of two binary neutron stars by AST3-2 from Aug.18 to 282017

Success of AST3-2 in Unattended observation mode for the whole antarctic winter shows that it has made some breakthrough progress in the key technology of optical telescope in extreme environment of Antarctic inland

The third AST3AST3-3 which is still under development can make astronomical survey in near infrared bandSo observations of time-domain survey and extrasolar planets searching can be made by taking the advantage of Antarctic inlandAnd it could help farther in breaking bottlenecks of infrared observation of China

 AST3-2 installed in Dome A

a careful maintenance of AST3-2 On January 2017

 

Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics & Technology ,National Astronomical Observatories ,CAS