Stellar photometry from the AST3-1 telescope at Kunlun Station at Dome A

The Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3, http://aag.bao.ac.cn/ast3/) consist of three 50/68cm modified Schmidt telescopes, equipped with 10k x 10k STA1600FT CCD cameras. The AST3 telescopes were designed for multi-band wide-field astronomical surveys at Dome A, Antarctica with a field-of-view of 4.3 square degrees. The first AST3 (AST3-1) was deployed to Dome A, Antarctica by the 28th Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition (CHINARE) team in January 2012, and became the largest optical telescope in Antarctica. AST3-1 started operation in mid March 2012, when the polar day ended, but unfortunately stopped working on 8 May 2012 due to some malfunction in the power supply system. Until then, AST3-1 had repeatedly surveyed nearly 2,000 deg^2 to search SNe with more than 3,000 60-sec exposures, and monitored several fields, including the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud with greater than 4,700 frames, a field in the Galactic disk for exoplanet transit surveying with greater than 3,000 frames, and the Wolf-Rayet star HD 143414 with greater than 1,000 frames. The data were retrieved by the 29th CHINARE team in April 2013, then have been processed by the Antarctic Astronomy Group at NAOC.

AST3-1 was supported by UNSW's PLATO observatory infrastructure.

The data are available here:

http://explore.china-vo.org/?locale=en

and are described in the following peer-reviewed paper:

Ma, B., Shang, Z., Hu, Y., Hu, K., Liu, Q., Ashley, M. C. B., Cui, X., Du, F., Fan, D., Feng, L., Huang, F., Gu, B., He, B., Ji, T., Li, X., Li, Z., Liu, H., Tian, Q., Tao, C., Wang, D., Wang, L., Wang, S., Wang, X., Wei, P., Wu, J., Xu, L., Yang, S., Yang, M., Yang, Y., Yu, C., Yuan, X., Zhou, H., Zhang, H., Zhang, X., Zhang, Y., Zhao, C., Zhou, J., Zhu, Z.-H., 2018, The first release of the AST3-1 Point Source Catalogue from Dome A, Antarctica, MNRAS, 479, 111–120., doi:10.1093/mnras/sty1392, Sep/2018

南极巡天望远镜（Antarctic Survey Telescopes, AST3，http://aag.bao.ac.cn/ast3/）由三台改进型施密特望远镜组成，搭载10k×10k规格的STA1600FT电荷耦合器件（Charge-Coupled Device, CCD）相机。AST3望远镜专为南极冰穹A（Dome A）的多波段宽场天文巡天设计，单场视场达4.3平方度。首台AST3望远镜（AST3-1）于2012年1月由中国第28次南极考察队（Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition, CHINARE）部署至南极冰穹A，成为南极地区最大的光学望远镜。AST3-1于2012年3月中旬极地昼结束后正式启动观测，但不幸于2012年5月8日因供电系统故障停止运行。截至停机前，AST3-1已完成近2000平方度天区的超新星（Supernova, SNe）搜寻巡天，累计获取超过3000次60秒曝光的观测数据；同时对多个天区开展监测工作，包括拥有超4700帧观测数据的大麦哲伦星云（Large Magellanic Cloud, LMC）核心天区、包含超3000帧数据的系外行星凌星巡天银盘天区，以及拥有超1000帧观测数据的沃尔夫-拉叶星（Wolf-Rayet star）HD 143414。该批观测数据由中国第29次南极考察队于2013年4月回收，并由中国科学院国家天文台（National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, NAOC）南极天文研究团队完成数据处理。

AST3-1项目得到了新南威尔士大学（University of New South Wales, UNSW）PLATO观测台站基础设施的支持。

该数据集可通过以下链接获取：
http://explore.china-vo.org/?locale=en

相关详细信息已发表于以下同行评议论文：
Ma, B., Shang, Z., Hu, Y., Hu, K., Liu, Q., Ashley, M. C. B., Cui, X., Du, F., Fan, D., Feng, L., Huang, F., Gu, B., He, B., Ji, T., Li, X., Li, Z., Liu, H., Tian, Q., Tao, C., Wang, D., Wang, L., Wang, S., Wang, X., Wei, P., Wu, J., Xu, L., Yang, S., Yang, M., Yang, Y., Yu, C., Yuan, X., Zhou, H., Zhang, H., Zhang, X., Zhang, Y., Zhao, C., Zhou, J., Zhu, Z.-H., 2018, 《南极冰穹A AST3-1点源目录首次发布》，《皇家天文学会月报》（Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, MNRAS），479卷，111–120页，doi:10.1093/mnras/sty1392，2018年9月