The Opto-mechanical design of the Antarctic Telescope ICE-T

Abstract

The International Concordia Explorer Telescope (ICE-T) is two 60cm wide-field robotic Schmidt telescopes optimized for high-precision CCD photometry in two separate bandpasses. The project is under final design by an international consortium led by the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, Germany, and was foreseen to be placed at the French-Italian Concordia Station on Dome C in Antarctica. Its core scientific objective would be to detect and investigate the combined effects of extra-solar planets, stellar magnetic activity and non-radial pulsations on the structure and evolution of stars. We present the optical, the mechanical, and the electronic design of the telescope and lay out the operational constraints for its search for extrasolar planets and magnetic stellar activity.