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Four winters of photometry with ASTEP South at Dome C, Antarctica
- Source :
- Astronomy and Astrophysics-A&A, Astronomy and Astrophysics-A&A, EDP Sciences, 2018, 619, pp.A116. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201732565⟩
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- HAL CCSD, 2018.
-
Abstract
- 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 reduction methods. We achieved nearly continuous observations over the winters. We measure an average sky background of 20 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ in the 579-642 nm bandpass. We built the lightcurves of 6000 stars and developed a model to infer the photometric quality of Dome C from the lightcurves themselves. The weather is photometric $67.1\pm4.2$ % of the time and veiled $21.8\pm2.0$ % of the time. The remaining time corresponds to poor quality data or winter storms. We analyzed the lightcurves of $\sigma$ Oct and HD 184465 and find that the amplitude of their main frequency varies by a factor of 3.5 and 6.7 over the four years, respectively. We also identify 34 new variable stars and eight new eclipsing binaries with periods ranging from 0.17 to 81 days. The phase coverage that we achieved with ASTEP South is exceptional for a ground-based instrument and the data quality enables the detection and study of variable objects. These results demonstrate the high quality of Dome C for photometry in the visible and for time series observations in general.<br />Comment: 23 pages, 23 figures, A&A in press
- Subjects :
- media_common.quotation_subject
FOS: Physical sciences
Astrophysics
01 natural sciences
010309 optics
Photometry (optics)
0103 physical sciences
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
010303 astronomy & astrophysics
ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS
media_common
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Physics
Astronomy
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Exoplanet
Stars
Amplitude
13. Climate action
Space and Planetary Science
Sky
Refracting telescope
Variable star
Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
[PHYS.ASTR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]
Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Data reduction
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00046361
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Astronomy and Astrophysics-A&A, Astronomy and Astrophysics-A&A, EDP Sciences, 2018, 619, pp.A116. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201732565⟩
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....2db4897dc09fdd88ad97f2537414c4de
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732565⟩