AST3-1 photometry from Dome A and Mohe

Bin Ma

The first Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3-1), equipped with a 10k x 10k CCD and SDSS-i filter, was deployed to Dome A, Antarctica in January 2012. From March to May, the pilot observations had repeatedly surveyed nearly ~ 2,000 deg^2 with more than 3,000 60-sec exposures, and monitored the center of Large Magellanic Cloud with > 4,700 frames and several other fields on the Galactic disk with ~ 7,000 frames. After careful corrections of cross talk, overscan, dark current and flat field, aperture photometry has been performed on these images. For a 60-sec exposure with good image quality, the 5-sigma detection limit is 19 mag, and the photometric precision for bright stars reaches 2 mmag. The absolute astrometric precision is about 0.1", while the internal precision for bright stars is 0.04".

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