Antarctic Survey Telescope 3-3: Overview, System Performance and Preliminary Observations at Yaoan, Yunnan

• Published in: Universe (Basel) Vol. 8; no. 6; p. 303
• Main Authors: Sun, Tianrui, Li, Xiaoyan, Hu, Lei, Meng, Kelai, Han, Zijian, Hu, Maokai, Li, Zhengyang, Wen, Haikun, Du, Fujia, Yang, Shihai, Gu, Bozhong, Yuan, Xiangyan, Li, Yun, Wang, Huihui, Liu, Lei, Zhu, Zhenxi, Huang, Xuehai, Lei, Chengming, Wang, Lifan, Wu, Xuefeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2022
• Subjects: Astronomy; Atmospheric aerosols; Cameras; Data processing; Gravitational waves; Physics; Polls & surveys; Power supply; robotic optical telescope; Servers; Telescopes; transient observations; wide-field survey; China; Antarctica; Yunnan China
• ISSN: 2218-1997; 2218-1997
• DOI: 10.3390/universe8060303

The third Antarctic Survey Telescope array instrument at Dome A in Antarctica, the AST3-3 telescope, has been in commissioning from March 2021. We deployed AST3-3 at the Yaoan astronomical station in Yunnan Province for an automatic time-domain survey and follow-up observations with an optimised observation and protection system. The telescope system of AST3-3 is similar to that of AST3-1 and AST3-2, except that it is equipped with a 14 K × 10 K QHY411 CMOS camera. AST3-3 has a field of view of 1.65∘×1.23∘ and is currently using the g band filter. During commissioning at Yaoan, AST3-3 aims to conduct an extragalactic transient survey, coupled with prompt follow-ups of opportunity targets. In this paper, we present the architecture of the AST3-3 automatic observation system. We demonstrate the data processing of observations by representatives SN 2022eyw and GRB 210420B.