We have designed a novel all-reflective optical system for an infrared camera. The camera gives a flat 5 arcminute field with a final focal ratio of f/2.5 when used at the f/15 focus of the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). A 70mm diameter Fabry-Perot filter can be accommodated in a collimated beam, thereby giving narrow-band imaging capability. The design could readily be adapted to other telescopes and focal ratios. Its advantages are no chromatic aberration, no vignetting, no ghost images, low light-loss and excellent image quality.

Conditions on the high Antarctic Plateau would appear to be extremely favourable for a wide range of astronomical research. Before a decision can be made on constructing an observatory, data are required on site conditions at the most promising locations. To enable these data to be collected, a Lockheed Automated Geophysical Observatory is being purchased. This facility will be fitted with a suite of astronomical site-testing instruments, and deployed to several sites on the Antarctic Plateau. This program will allow a definitive assessment of the site conditions to be made by the end of this century.

PLATO is a fully-robotic observatory designed for operation in Antarctica. It generates its own electricity (about 1 kW), heat (sufficient to keep two 10-foot shipping containers comfortably above 0°C when the outside temperature is at -70°C), and connects to the internet using the Iridium satellite system (providing ~30 MB/day of data transfer). Following a successful first year of operation at Dome A during 2008, PLATO was upgraded with new instruments for 2009.

In January 2005, members of a Chinese expedition team were the first humans to visit Dome A on the Antarctic plateau, a site predicted to be one of the very best astronomical sites on earth.
In 2006, the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy (CCAA) was founded to promote the development of astronomy in Antarctica, especially at Dome A. CCAA has since taken part in two traverses to Dome A, organized by the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), in the austral summers of 2007/2008 and 2008/2009. These traverses resulted in the installation of many site-testing and science instruments, supported by the PLATO observatory. The Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) has produced excellent results from Dome A.
Our future plans include further site-testing work, and the following full-scale science instruments: three 0.5-m Antarctic Schmidt Telescopes (AST3), and a proposed 4-m telescope for wide-field infrared high spatial-resolution surveys. The first AST3 telescope is under construction and is scheduled for installation in 2011.

Site testing data provides an essential part of the justification for funding any new astronomical facility by defining the technological design and determining the telescope performance, thus allowing the scientific objectives to be prioritised. Here we review the current status of site testing at Dome C by examining the range of instruments that have been, or are planned to be, deployed to the site. We then investigate in more detail preliminary data which has so far proven crucial for telescope design, data for which discrepancies exist between two or more instruments, and required data for which there are no current plans to obtain. We discuss the implications of this data on the technical design, expected performance, and the scientific capabilities for a 2.5 m class optical/infrared telescope. Finally, we identify the site parameters that require further study, and define the experiments necessary to determine these parameters.

The THz spectral region includes a number of important transitions which allow us to trace the evolution of the interstellar medium. Because of the opacity of the atmosphere in this spectral range, the best sites for ground-based THz observations are on the Antarctic Plateau; of these sites, Dome A is expected to be the best. THz survey science can be carried out with small telescopes, easing logistical constraints. By deploying a submillimetre-wave tipper/ telescope to Dome A, we have trialled several technologies for such an instrument, and we are able to test whether the site quality is sufficient for THz surveys.

We compare the merits of potential observatory sites on the Antarctic Plateau, in regard to the boundary layer, cloud cover, free atmosphere seeing, aurorae, airglow, and precipitable water vapour. We find that (a) all Antarctic sites are likely compromised for optical work by airglow and aurorae; (b) Dome A is the best existing site in almost all respects; (c) there is an even better site (“Ridge A”) 150 kms SW of Dome A; (d) Dome F is a remarkably good site except for aurorae; (e) Dome C probably has the least cloud cover of any of the sites, and might be able to use a predicted `OH hole' in the Spring.

Dome A, the summit of the Antarctic plateau, is expected to have even better atmospheric conditions for ground-based astronomy than Dome C.Instruments to evaluate and exploit Dome A's astronomical potentialmust operate within logistical constraints, which are currentlyvery stringent. Instrumentation now at Dome A exemplifies the techniques and solutions required by this environment. Future instrumentation and infrastructure will allow the qualities of the siteto be exploited much more fully.

The Gattini-DomeC project, part of the IRAIT site testing campaign and ongoing since January 2006, consists of two cameras for the measurement of optical sky brightness, large area cloud cover, and auroral detection above the DomeC site, home of the French-Italian Concordia station. The cameras are transit in nature and are virtually identical except for the nature of the lenses. The cameras have operated throughout the past two Antarctic winter seasons and here we present the results obtained from the 2006 winter-time dataset of the wide field “All-sky camera".

In this paper we review the progress towards the deployment of alarge "PILOT-like" telescope at Concordia Station, Dome C. PILOT isa proposed 2.4 m optical/IR telescope that will cost in excess of EUR10 m, and is thus representative of the scale of facility that willtransform Concordia into a significant international observatory. Adesign study of PILOT, funded by the Australian government, iscurrently underway. We describe the current status of this designstudy, and discuss the implications that major internationalprojects such as PILOT hold for the future of Antarctic astronomy atConcordia.

PILOT is proposed as a partnership between Australia and Europe todevelop a 2.4 m optical/infrared telescope for Dome C,Antarctica. Funding for a detailed designed study is being soughtfrom Australian sources, with a view to commencing construction inearly 2008. The current “strawman” design is for an f/10 dualNasmyth configuration with provision for both a silicon carbide fasttip-tilt secondary mirror for the thermal infrared, and an adaptivesecondary mirror to achieve diffraction-limited imaging atwavelengths as short as V-band.


The Antarctic plateau has superb astronomical seeing above aturbulent boundary layer. This layer has a thickness of between tensof metres and a few hundred metres, depending on the site. We aredeveloping a sonic radar, SNODAR, to measure the turbulence in theboundary layer from 10 to 50 m, and, in particular, to measurethe height of the boundary layer to an accuracy of 1 m.Commercial sonic radars typically have a lower limit of about 10 m, and have 10 m range bins. The results from SNODAR shouldallow a confident assessment of the height at which one must mount atelescope in order to realise the superb free atmosphere seeing fromthe Antarctic plateau, which has been measured at Dome C to be 0.27arcsecs on average, and better than 0.15 arcsecs for 25% of thetime.


The Automated Patrol Telescope, operated by the University of New South Wales, has been undertaking a search for extrasolar planets using the transit method. We present lightcurves from two recent promising candidates; spectroscopic follow-up using the ANU 2.3m telescope shows that the companions are probably low mass stars rather than planets, although more data will be needed to be certain. Additionally, we outline future improvements to our transit search: a hardware upgrade scheduled for 2006, and the addition of a robust trend-filtering algorithm to the data reduction software.

A well-focused research program over the past decade has shown that the South Pole has many remarkable characteristics that are particularly favorable for astronomy. These include the very cold, dry atmosphere and the vanishingly small free-air turbulence. Dome C, site of the new French/Italian station Concordia, has all of these attributes plus the added advantage of very low ground-level wind speeds. Higher on the plateau, locations such as the 4200 m high Dome A may well represent the ultimate ground based astronomical observing sites.

Near-infrared (1-3μm) emission lines of molecular and ionized hydrogen are excellent tools for investigating the morphology, energetics and kinematics of planetary nebulae, especially those PNe which contain large amounts of dust and are thus obscured at shorter wavelengths. The southern planetary nebula NGC 3132 was imaged with UNSWIRF (University of New South Wales Infrared Fabry-Perot) and IRIS on the 3.9m AAT Images in the H2 v=1-0 S(1) and H2 v=2-1 S(1) lines at 2.12μm and 2.25μm, and in Hii Brγ at 2.16μm are presented.