Toward a large telescope facility for submm/FIR astronomy at Dome C
2008
Submillimetre astronomy is the prime technique to unveil the birth and early evolution of stars and galaxies in the local
and distant Universe. Preliminary meteorological studies and atmospheric transmission models tend to demonstrate that
Dome C might offer atmosphere conditions that open the 200-μm atmospheric windows, and could potentially be a site
for a large ground-based telescope facility. However, Antarctic climate conditions might also severely impact and
deform any telescope mirror and hardware. We present prerequisite conditions and their associate experiments for
defining a large telescope facility for submillimetre astronomy at Dome C: (1) Whether the submm/THz atmospheric
windows open from 200 μm during a large and stable fraction of time; (2) The knowledge of thermal gradient and (3)
icing formation and their impact on a telescope mirror and hardware. This paper will present preliminary results on
current experiments that measure icing, thermal gradient and sky opacity at Dome C. We finally discuss a possible
roadmap toward the deployment of a large telescope facility at Dome C.
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