EPJ Web of Conferences 11, 06001 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20101106001

ASTEP: Towards the detection and characterization of exoplanets from Dome C

¹ Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, Observatoire Côte d’Azur, France
[crouzet@oca.eu]
² Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, Observatoire Côte d’Azur, France
³ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, US
⁴ Optique et Vision, Juan les Pins, France
⁵ DLR Institute for Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany
⁶ Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, TU Berlin, Germany
⁷ Oxford Astrophysics, Department of Physics, UK
⁸ School of Physics, University of Exeter, UK
⁹ Universitá di Padova, Dipartimento di Astronomia, Italy

Abstract

The ASTEP project (Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets), aims at testing the quality of the Dome C site in Antarctica for photometry in the visible, as well as detecting and characterizing transiting exoplanets. A dedicated telescope, ASTEP400, has been developped and installed at Concordia. The first campaign took place during the winter 2010, and the telescope functionned nominally during all the winter. A first analysis of the data leads to a precision of 189 and 205 ppm for WASP-19 and WASP-18 respectively, for continuous observations during 1 month. This shows that extremely high precision photometry is achievable from Dome C.