The International Concordia Explorer Telescope (ICE-T): an Ultimate Transit-Search Experiment for Dome C

Abstract

ICE-T is a fully robotic telescope for astrophysics and atmospheric research for the Antarctic station Concordia at Dome C. ICE-T consists of two 60cm optical ultra-wide-field Schmidt telescopes and one 18cm narrow-field Maksutov spectrophotometric telescope on a single mount. The dual 60cm will be mainly used for a transit search due to extrasolar planets while the 18-cm will be used for measuring aerosol optical depths. ICE-T is a team effort of the German Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar Research, the Italian Universities of Padova and Perugia, the INAF Observatory Catania, and the Catalonian IEEC in Barcelona, Spain, and the AIP with collaboration from the University of New South Wales, Australia and the University of St Andrews, U.K.