Antarctica Schmidt telescopes
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| Alternative names | The Antarctic Schmidt/Survey Telescopes |
|---|---|
| Location(s) | Antarctica |
| Coordinates | 80°25′S 77°07′E / 80.42°S 77.12°E |
  Location of Antarctica Schmidt telescopes | |
The Antarctica Schmidt Telescopes project (also known as Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3)) is a joint project between Texas A&M University (TAMU) and the Beijing Astronomical Observatory to build three small (50cm aperture) different-filtered wide-field telescopes at the Antarctic Kunlun Station near Dome A in Antarctica. Lifan Wang at TAMU is the main instigator of the project. [1][2][3]
These telescopes will take advantage of the low background and the long Antarctic nights to provide high-accuracy photometric time series for finding extrasolar planets, and to observe wide fields in the infrared to look for new supernovae.
The first of three Antarctic Survey Telescopes AST3-1, was installed at the Antarctic Kunlun Station in April 2012. The 2nd and 3rd telescopes were installed in 2015 and 2021, respectively.[4][5]
An update was published indicating that the first telescope operated for only a few weeks in 2012 before a power failure, and was repaired in 2013, but the CCD controller proceeded to fail after further data collection. The AST3-2 unit has seen several design revisions to improve reliability in the harsh Antarctic environment, and was tested over the 2013-2014 winter in Mohe, China before being sent to the field.[6]
The AST3-3 telescope is equipped with a near-infrared camera (AST3-NIR) to perform the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey.[7]
In January of 2026, the Nanjing Institute of Optics & Technology published a press release stating AST3-2 had completed it's winter observations.[8] The press release also states that over the course of one polar night, AST3-2 "remotely acquired 3.5 terabytes of observation data"[8]. This is comparable to 1000 hours of raw observations according to the release.
