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

TL;DR

The paper presents the design, deployment, and initial observational results of the AST3-3 telescope at Yaoan, demonstrating its capabilities for time-domain surveys and transient follow-ups with a new CMOS camera system.

Contribution

It introduces the AST3-3 telescope system, including its architecture and data processing, and reports initial observations and performance at the Yaoan station.

Findings

Successful commissioning and deployment at Yaoan station.

Effective data processing demonstrated with SN 2022eyw and GRB 210420B.

Capability for extragalactic transient surveys and follow-up observations.

Abstract

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 14K~$ \times$~10K QHY411 CMOS camera. AST3-3 has a field of view of $1.65^\circ \times 1.23^\circ$ 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.