The PLATO observatory: robotic astronomy from the Antarctic plateau Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • AbstractPLATO is a 6 tonne completely self-contained robotic observatory that provides its own heat, electricity, and satellite communications. It was deployed to Dome A in Antarctica in January 2008 by the Chinese expedition team, and is now in its second year of operation. PLATO is operating four 14.5cm optical telescopes with 1k 1k CCDs, a wide-field sky camera with a 2k 2k CCD and Sloan g, r, i filters, a fibre-fed spectrograph to measure the UV to near-IR sky spectrum, a 0.2m terahertz telescope, two sonic radars giving 1m resolution data on the boundary layer to a height of 180m, a 15m tower, meteorological sensors, and 8 web cameras. Beginning in 2010/11 PLATO will be upgraded to support a Multi Aperture Scintillation Sensor and three AST3 0.5m schmidt telescopes, with 10k 10 CCDs and 100TB/annum data requirements.

published proceedings

  • Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union

author list (cited authors)

  • Ashley, M., Allen, G., Bonner, C. S., Bradley, S. G., Cui, X., Everett, J. R., ... Zhu, Z.

citation count

  • 6

complete list of authors

  • Ashley, MCB||Allen, G||Bonner, CS||Bradley, SG||Cui, X||Everett, JR||Feng, L||Gong, X||Hengst, S||Hu, J||Jiang, Z||Kulesa, CA||Lawrence, JS||Li, Y||Luong-Van, DM||McCaughrean, MJ||Moore, AM||Pennypacker, C||Qin, W||Riddle, R||Shang, Z||Storey, JWV||Sun, B||Suntzeff, N||Tothill, NFH||Travouillon, T||Walker, CK||Wang, L||Yan, J||Yang, H||York, DG||Yuan, X||Zhang, X||Zhang, Z||Zhou, X||Zhu, Z

publication date

  • November 2009