Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2007
The low scintillation noise and the long continuous darkness areamong the unique properties of the Dome-C site on the eastAntarctic plateau. Ultra-high precision optical photometry istherefore among the techniques best suited for this particularsite. We propose a telescope (ICE-T) optimized for ultra-high andultra wide field photometry for Dome C. It consists of two 60 cmoptical ultra-wide-field Wynne-Schmidt telescopes and one 18 cmnarrow-field Maksutov spectrophotometric telescope on a singlemount. ICE-T is currently a team effort of the GermanAlfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar Research, the ItalianUniversities of Padova and Perugia, the INAF Observatory Catania,and the Catalonian IEEC in Barcelona, Spain, and the AIP, withcollaboration from the University of New South Wales, Australiaand the University of St. Andrews, UK. In this paper, I discusssome of the many problems associated with sub-milli-magphotometry.