AST3-3 is the third robotic facility of the Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3) for transient surveys to be deployed at Dome A, Antarctica. Due to the current pandemic, the telescope has been currently deployed at the Yaoan Observation Station in China, starting the commissioning observation and a transient survey. This article presented a fully automatic data processing system for AST3-3 observations. The transient detection pipeline uses state-of-the-art image subtraction techniques optimized for GPU devices. Image reduction and transient photometry are accelerated by concurrent task methods. Our Python-based system allows for transient detection from wide-field data in a real-time and accurate way. A ResNet-based rotational-invariant neural network was employed to classify the transient candidates. As a result, the system enables the auto-generation of transients and their light curves.
Antarctic Survey Telescope 3-3: Overview, System Performance and Preliminary Observations at Yaoan, Yunnan
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.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1817099
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10352471
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Universe
- Volume:
- 8
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2218-1997
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 303
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/universe8060303
