Kavli Affiliate: Donald G. York
| First 5 Authors: Ryan J. Oelkers, Lucas M. Macri, Lifan Wang, Michael C. B. Ashley, Xiangqun Cui
| Summary:
The Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) carried out high-cadence
time-series observations of 20.1 square degrees centered on the South Celestial
Pole during the 2008, 2009 & 2010 winter seasons from Dome A in Antarctica. The
nearly-continuous 6 months of dark conditions during each observing season
allowed for >10^6 images to be collected through gri and clear filters,
resulting in the detection of >10^4 sources over the course of 3 years of
operation. The nearly space-like conditions in the Antarctic plateau are an
ideal testbed for the suitability of very small-aperture (<20 cm) telescopes to
detect transient events, variable stars and stellar flares. We present the
results of a robust search for such objects using difference image analysis of
the data obtained during the 2009 & 2010 winter seasons. While no transients
were found, we detected 29 flaring events and find a normalized flaring rate of
5+-4×10^-7 flare/hour for late-K dwarfs, 1+-1×10^-6 flare/hour for M dwarfs
and 7+-1×10^-7 flare/hour for all other stars in our sample. We suggest future
small-aperture telescopes planned for deployment at Dome A would benefit from a
tracking mechanism, to help alleviate effects from ghosting, and a finer pixel
scale, to increase the telescope’s sensitivity to faint objects. We find that
the light curves of non-transient sources have excellent photometric qualities
once corrected for systematics, and are limited only by photon noise and
atmospheric scintillation.
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