Paper 13094-87
ASTEP to Cryoscope: expanding Antarctic astronomy at Dome-C with a wide field infrared telescope
21 June 2024 • 14:00 - 14:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G403/404, North - 4F
Abstract
Dome-C in the Antarctic Plateau is a privileged site for Astronomy, with one of the lowest concentrations of water vapor in the world, providing a pristine atmospheric window for IR observations. Together with the long winter nights, this allows for extended continuous observational campaigns. At the Concordia Station, ASTEP has taken advantage of the weather and long nights to observe long-period transiting exoplanets for over a decade. With the Cryoscope Pathfinder we now plan to take advantage of the dark IR window between 2.35 and 2.55𝜇m.
The unique design of Cryoscope Pathfinder is optimized for a very wide field of view and very thermal background. It is a cryogenic 0.26 m telescope designed for observations in K-dark with a field of view of 16 deg^2. This is the first step for a much more ambitious project, the full scale 1-meter class Cryoscope telescope, with a field of view of 50 deg^2. The initial science drivers are the study of exoplanets and of the infrared transient sky, where it will play a major role in the localization of gravitational wave sources. Furthermore, many other science topics will be enabled by Cryoscope and through synergies with other surveys.
Presenter
Antonio de Ugarte Postigo
Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (France)
Dr. de Ugarte Postigo is currently Director of Research for the French CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) at the Côte d'Azur Observatory, in Nice. He is an observational astronomer specialized on the study of astronomical transients and in particular of gamma-ray bursts. He devotes part of his time to the development of instrumentation for the study of transients. He has worked on the development of robotic observatories, was responsible for the gratings of X-shooter, and was the principal investigator of the OCTOCAM (now SCORPIO) multi-band imager and spectrograph for Gemini-South. He also leads the GRBSpec database as the largest public resource of gamma-ray burst spectroscopy.