Arctic Update

Arctic Update

Site-Testing Conferences

I missed sending out an update for the last issue, so this is to catch up since summer. A meeting of the Astronomomy and Astrophysics from Antarctica (AAA) research program was held at Siena, Italy in July. The AAA is within the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Astronomy (SCAR), which provided an opportunity to see the latest projects underway in Antarctica, hear about site testing there, and report recent results from Eureka. An interesting archival tool was presented by Geoff Sims at the University of New South Wales to help organize some of this large volume; catagorizing abstracts from the Astrophysics Data Server (ADS) into bins relevant for polar site testing: seeing, sky brightness, water vapour, etc [1]. There will be more Arctic results to come at the Montreal "Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation" in June 2014. Another upcoming site-testing meeting to promote is "Adapting to the Atmosphere", which will not be specifically about the poles, but more geared towards the link between site testing and adaptive optics, September 2014 at Durham, UK [2].

Nighttime Observing 2013/14

Since my last update the sun has once again set in Eureka, ushering in another long, starry night at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL). No telescopes were deployed there this winter, as they have been for seeing measurements in recent years (See Summer Equinox 'Update'). In October the University of Toronto J-band sky-brightness monitor (PI: Suresh Sivanandam) was re-deployed, and the Arctic Wide-field Cameras (AWCams; PIs: Nick Law, now at the University of North Carolina, and Ray Carlberg) were readied for renewed scientific observations from the roof of PEARL. The AWCams have performed beautifully, continuously operating during the full dark period of 2012/13, until sunup in March. There has been one brief hiccup due to a power outage this winter, but the fault it caused was quickly recovered from thanks to an Environment Canada crewmember kindly going up from Eureka to (literally) push the right button. Once again, the AWCams are staring at the same circumpolar field, carrying on with a survey of bright stars begun during winter 2011/12. One of the main scientific drivers for this is to capture elusive long-period (week to a month or so) planet transits; repeated observations with little downtime is efficient at weeding out false positives and confirming candidates for intense follow up.

Figure 1 - Cameras re-deployed on PEARL rooftop in October 2013, at the end of twilight.

Eric Steinbring, Eric.Steinbring@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

References/Links
  1. SCAR AAA Site Testing Database developed by Geoff Sims: http://www.astronomy.scar.org/WorkingGroupA/scar-db.php
  2. "Adapting to the Atmosophere" meeting poster: http://www.dur.ac.uk/james.osborn/conf_poster/