Antarctica Schmidt telescopes

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The Antarctica Schmidt Telescopes project (also known as Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3)) is a joint project between Texas A&M University (TAMU) and the Beijing Astronomical Observatory to build three small (50cm aperture) different-filtered wide-field telescopes at the Antarctic Kunlun Station near Dome A in Antarctica. Lifan Wang at TAMU is the main instigator of the project. [1][2][3]

These telescopes will take advantage of the low background and the long Antarctic nights to provide high-accuracy photometric time series for finding extrasolar planets, and to observe wide fields in the infrared to look for new supernovae.

The first of three Antarctic Survey Telescopes AST3-1, was installed at the Antarctic Kunlun Station in April 2012. The 2nd and 3rd telescopes were installed in 2015 and 2021, respectively.[4][5]

An update was published indicating that the first telescope operated for only a few weeks in 2012 before a power failure, and was repaired in 2013, but the CCD controller proceeded to fail after further data collection. The AST3-2 unit has seen several design revisions to improve reliability in the harsh Antarctic environment, and was tested over the 2013-2014 winter in Mohe, China before being sent to the field.[6]

The AST3-3 telescope is equipped with a near-infrared camera (AST3-NIR) to perform the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey.[7]

In January of 2026, the Nanjing Institute of Optics & Technology published a press release stating AST3-2 had completed it's winter observations.[8] The press release also states that over the course of one polar night, AST3-2 "remotely acquired 3.5 terabytes of observation data"[8]. This is comparable to 1000 hours of raw observations according to the release.

## See also

* List of astronomical observatories
* Lists of telescopes

## References

1. ↑ "Antarctic Schmidt Telescopes". physics.tamu.edu. http://dome-a.physics.tamu.edu/~lifanwang/AST3/Antarctic Schmidt Telescopes.html.
2. ↑ "China to build stronger telescope network in South Pole". China.org.cn. July 24, 2009. http://www.china.org.cn/china/news/2009-07/24/content_18194380.htm.
3. ↑ "Optical system of the Three Antarctic Survey Telescopes". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. December 22, 2011. http://mcba11.phys.unsw.edu.au/~plato/papers/yua12a.pdf.
4. ↑ Yang, Xu; Hu, Yi; Shang, Zhaohui; Ma, Bin; Ashley, Michael C. B.; Cui, Xiangqun; Du, Fujia; Fu, Jianning et al. (2023-02-14), "Data release of the AST3-2 automatic survey from Dome A, Antarctica", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 520 (4): 5635–5650, doi:10.1093/mnras/stad498, http://arxiv.org/abs/2302.06997, retrieved 2025-11-22
5. ↑ Sun, Tianrui; Li, Xiaoyan; Hu, Lei; Meng, Kelai; Han, Zijian; Hu, Maokai; Li, Zhengyang; Wen, Haikun et al. (2022-06-13), "Antarctic Survey Telescope 3-3: Overview, System Performance and Preliminary Observations at Yaoan, Yunnan", Universe 8 (6): 303, doi:10.3390/universe8060303, Bibcode: 2022Univ....8..303S, http://arxiv.org/abs/2206.03170, retrieved 2025-11-22
6. ↑ "Updates of AST3 Survey". www.astronomy.scar.org. 2013-07-25. http://www.astronomy.scar.org/AAA2013/pdf/Shang.pdf.
7. ↑ Zheng, Jessica R.; Lawrence, Jon; Content, Robert; Churilov, Vladimir; Zhang, Kaiyuan; Yuan, Xiangyan; Lu, Haiping (August 2016). "Antarctic Surveying Telescope (AST3-3) NIR camera for the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey (KISS): thermal optimization and system performance" (in en). Modeling, Systems Engineering, and Project Management for Astronomy VI 9911: 99111H. doi:10.1117/12.2231065. ISSN 0277-786X. Bibcode: 2016SPIE.9911E..1HZ. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016SPIE.9911E..1HZ/abstract.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "China's Antarctic survey telescope AST3-2 completes winter observations
-Nanjing institute of Astronomical optics & Technology National Astronomical O bservatories .CAS". http://english.niaot.cas.cn/ns/202601/t20260116_1145808.html.

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