Conveners
Optical Infrared Radio: Dome A
- Xuefei Gong (NIAOT)
Increasing space debris has seriously threatened the safety of spacecraft of various countries. The Pole regions are the most densely distributed regions of Low-Earth orbit space debris, and are ideal sites for observing LEO space debris. Investigating Antarctica as a window to the skies for satellite traffic management has been identified as an important goal for Antarctic Astronomy in the...
Following the installation of two DIMMs at Kunlun Station, Dome A in early 2019, we were able to directly measure astronomical seeing through the winter for the first time. At a height of just 8 meters, the seeing was detected as good as 0.13 arcsec. For 31% time, it was free of boundary layer turbulence, and consequently was the free-atmosphere seeing only, with a median of 0.31 arcsec. ...
At any infrared/THz wavelength longer than about 2.3 microns, China's Kunlun Station in Antarctica has very possibly the darkest sky and best conditions - seeing, cloud coverage, atmospheric stability, transparency - of any site on Earth. This directly translates into dramatic improvements in survey speed and depth. In the near-infrared, the Kdark region just longward of 2.3 microns is...
Astronomy work has been carried out at Dome A for more than ten years. The efforts have greatly advanced our knowledge in understanding the site conditions for astronomical observations, the instrumentation under extreme Antarctica conditions, and the research in time-domain astronomy. A complete review is available in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (Shang 2020, RAA, 20, 168). We...