Towards ASTEP+, a two-color photometric telescope at Dome C, Antarctica

Crouzet, Nicolas; Agabi, A.; Guillot, T.; Abe, Lyu; Schmider, F. X.; Mékarnia, D.; Triaud, A. H. M. J.; Bresson, Y.; Mauclert, N.; Bailet, C.; Breeveld, Dennis; Blommaert, Sander; Shortt, Brian; Daban, Jean-Baptiste; Lagrange, Anne-Marie; Touzé, Romain; Dufour, Justin; Stee, Valentin; Caruana, Jocelyn

doi:10.1117/12.2562550

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Starting in 2022, thanks to support from the University of Birmingham, ESA, INSU, and the Laboratoire Lagrange, a new camera box 23 could be installed, starting ASTEP+ observations in two colors. This required a new pipeline, but also an adaptation of the scheduling system to cope with the large number of potentially interesting targets to be observed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observation scheduling and automatic data reduction for the Antarctic telescope, ASTEP+

Dransfield

Mékarnia

Triaud

et al. 2022

Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems IX

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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 operations of ASTEP+, a 40 cm optical telescope located at Concordia Station in Antarctica. Following a successful summer campaign, ASTEP+ has begun the 2022 observing season with a brand-new two-colour photometer with increased sensitivity. A new Python data analysis pipeline installed on a dedicated server in Concordia will significantly improve the precision of the extracted photometry, enabling us to get higher signal-to-noise transit detections. The new pipeline additionally incorporates automatic transit modelling to reduce the amount of manual post-processing required. It also handles the automatic daily transfer of the photometric lightcurves and control data to Europe. Additionally, we present the Python and web-based systems used for selection and scheduling of transit observations; these systems have wide applicability for the scheduling of other astronomical observations with strong time constraints. We also review the type of science that ASTEP+ will be conducting and analyse how unique ASTEP+ is to exoplanet transit research.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observation scheduling and automatic data reduction for the Antarctic telescope, ASTEP+

Dransfield

Mékarnia

Triaud

et al. 2022

Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems IX

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“…The focal box design and its characteristics are described in a previous SPIE paper. 1 Further author information: Send correspondence to F.X. Schmider (schmider@oca.eu).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observing exoplanets from Antarctica in two colours: set-up and operation of ASTEP+

Schmider

Abe

Agabi

et al. 2022

Ground-Based and Airborne Telescopes IX

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On December 2021, a new camera box for two-colour simultaneous visible photometry was successfully installed on the ASTEP telescope at the Concordia station in Antarctica. The new focal box offers increased capabilities for the ASTEP+ project. The opto-mechanical design of the camera was described in a previous paper. 1 Here, we focus on the laboratory tests of each of the two cameras, the low-temperature behaviour of the focal box in a thermal chamber, the on-site installation and alignment of the new focal box on the telescope, the measurement of the turbulence in the tube and the operation of the telescope equipped with the new focal box. We also describe the data acquisition and the telescope guiding procedure and provide a first assessment of the performances reached during the first part of the 2022 observation campaign. Observations of the WASP19 field, already observed previously with ASTEP, demonstrates an improvement of the SNR by a factor 1.7, coherent with an increased number of photon by a factor of 3. The throughput of the two cameras is assessed both by calculation of the characteristics of the optics and quantum efficiency of the cameras, and by direct observations on the sky. We find that the ASTEP+ two-colour transmission curves (with a dichroic separating the fluxes at 690nm) are similar to those of GAIA in the blue and red channels, but with a lower transmission in the ASTEP+ red channel leading to a 1.5 magnitude higher B-R value compared to the GAIA B-R value. With this new setting, the ASTEP+ telescope will ensure the follow-up and the characterization of a large number of exoplanetary transits in the coming years in view of the future space missions JWST and Ariel.

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Small body harvest with the Antarctic Search for Transiting Exoplanets (ASTEP) project

Hasler,

Burdanov,

de Wit

et al. 2023

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Small Solar system bodies serve as pristine records that have been minimally altered since their formation. Their observations provide valuable information regarding the formation and evolution of our Solar system. Interstellar objects can also provide insight on the formation of exoplanetary systems and planetary system evolution as a whole. In this work, we present the application of our framework to search for small Solar system bodies in exoplanet transit survey data collected by the Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets (ASTEP) project. We analysed data collected during the Austral winter of 2021 by the ASTEP 400 telescope located at the Concordia Station, at Dome C, Antarctica. We identified 20 known objects from dynamical classes ranging from Inner Main-belt asteroids to one comet. Our search recovered known objects down to a magnitude of V = 20.4 mag, with a retrieval rate of ∼80 per cent for objects with V ≤ 20 mag. Future work will apply the pipeline to archival ASTEP data that observed fields for periods of longer than a few hours to treat them as deep-drilling data sets and reach fainter limiting magnitudes for slow-moving objects, on the order of V ≈ 23–24 mag.

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Towards ASTEP+, a two-color photometric telescope at Dome C, Antarctica

Cited by 3 publications

References 21 publications

Observation scheduling and automatic data reduction for the Antarctic telescope, ASTEP+

Observation scheduling and automatic data reduction for the Antarctic telescope, ASTEP+

Observing exoplanets from Antarctica in two colours: set-up and operation of ASTEP+

Small body harvest with the Antarctic Search for Transiting Exoplanets (ASTEP) project

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