Astronomers have always sought the best sites for their telescopes. Antarctica, with its high plateau reaching to above 4,000 metres, intense cold, exceptionally low humidity and stable atmosphere, offers what for many forms of astronomy is the ultimate observing location on this planet. While optical, infrared and millimetre astronomers are building their observatories on the ice, particle physicists are using the ice itself as a detector and exploration of the terahertz region is being conducted from circumpolar long-duration balloons. Remarkable astronomical discoveries are already coming out of Antarctica, and much, much more is just around the corner.

Antarctic astronomical site-testing has been conducted using autonomous self-powered observatories for more than a decade (the AASTO at South Pole, the AASTINO at Dome C, and PLATO at Dome A/Dome F). More recently autonomous (PLATO) observatories have been developed and deployed to support small-scale scientific instruments, such as HEAT, a 0.6 m aperture terahertz telescope at Ridge A, and AST3, a 0.5 m optical telescope array at Dome A. This paper reviews the evolution of autonomous Antarctic astronomical observatories, and discusses the requirements and implications for observatories that will be needed for future larger-scale facilities.

A brief review is given of the major results from the last twenty years of astronomical site-testing in Antarctica. Suggestions are made for how to resolve some outstanding questions, such as the infrared sky background at Antarctic sites other than South Pole station.

We carried out the first seeing measurements at Dome Fuji in the 2010–2011 austral summer. From these observations, we found that the summer seeing at Dome Fuji was 1.2″ (mean), 1.1″ (median), 0.83″ (25th percentile) and 1.5″ (75th percentile), respectively. We also found that the seeing changed continuously and had a minimum around 0.7″ at ~18:00 hours daily. We compared the seeing with some weather parameters obtained from the 16 m mast, and found that the seeing had good correlations with atmosphere temperature and wind shear. These results suggest that the seeing is degraded by turbulence near the surface boundary layer. Because the data were obtained only over a short duration in summer, the general characteristics of Dome Fuji's seeing could not be evaluated. We plan to observe the seeing in winter with a stand-alone DIMM telescope. This new DIMM, which we named the Dome Fuji Differential Image Motion Monitor (DF–DIMM), will be installed at Dome Fuji in January 2013.

Over the past few years a major effort has been put into the exploration of potential sites for the deployment of submillimetre (submm) astronomical facilities. Amongst the most important sites are Dome C and Dome A on the Antarctic Plateau, and the Chajnantor area in Chile. In this context, we report on measurements of the sky opacity at 200 μm over a period of three years at the French-Italian station, Concordia, at Dome C, Antarctica. Based on satellite data, we present a comparison of the atmospheric transmission at 200, 350 μm between the best potential/known sites for submillimetre astronomy all around the world.

The precipitable water vapour (PWV) was extracted from satellite measurements of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on the METOP-A satellite, between 2008 and 2010. We computed the atmospheric transmission at 200 μm and 350 μm using the forward atmospheric model MOLIERE (Microwave Observation LIne Estimation and REtrieval). This method allows us to compare known sites all around the world without the calibration biases of multiple in-situ instruments, and to explore the potential of new sites.

At the summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A offers an intriguing location for future large scale optical astronomical observatories. The Gattini Dome A project was created to measure the optical sky brightness and large area cloud cover of the winter-time sky above this high altitude Antarctic site. The wide field camera and multi-filter system was installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led traverse to Dome A in January 2008. This automated wide field camera consists of an Apogee U4000 interline CCD coupled to a Nikon fisheye lens enclosed in a heated container with glass window. The system contains a filter mechanism providing a suite of standard astronomical photometric filters (Bessell B, V, R) and a long-pass red filter for the detection and monitoring of airglow emission. The system operated continuously throughout the 2009, and 2011 winter seasons and part-way through the 2010 season, recording long exposure images sequentially for each filter. We have in hand one complete winter-time dataset (2009) returned via a manned traverse. We present here the first measurements of sky brightness in the photometric V band, cloud cover statistics measured so far and an estimate of the extinction.

HRCAM (High Resolution CAMera) is a Canon 50D 15-megapixel digital SLR camera equipped with a Sigma 4.5 mm f/2.8 fish-eye lens. It was installed at Dome A on the Antarctic plateau in January 2010 and photographs the sky every 15 minutes. Primarily functioning as a site-testing instrument, data obtained from HRCAM provide valuable statistics on cloud cover, sky transparency and the distribution and frequency of auroral activity. We present a first look at data from HRCAM during 2010, including an overview of how we intend to reduce the images. We also demonstrate the potential of stellar photometry by using linear combinations of the in-built Canon RGB filters to convert instrumental magnitudes into the photometric BVR bands.

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides us with our most direct observational window to the early universe. Observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB have played a critical role in defining the now-standard cosmological model. In this contribution we review some of the basics of CMB science, highlighting the role of observations made with ground-based and balloon-borne Antarctic telescopes. Most of the ingredients of the standard cosmological model are poorly understood in terms of fundamental physics. We discuss how current and future CMB observations can address some of these issues, focusing on two directly relevant for Antarctic programmes: searching for gravitational waves from inflation via B-mode polarization, and mapping dark matter through CMB lensing.

Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have played a leading role in establishing an understanding of the structure and evolution of the Universe on the largest scales. This achievement has been enabled by a series of extremely successful experiments, coupled with the simplicity of the relationship between the cosmological theory and data. Antarctic experiments, including both balloon-borne telescopes and instruments at the South Pole, have played a key role in realizing the scientific potential of the CMB, from the characterization of the temperature anisotropies to the detection and study of the polarized component. Current and planned Antarctic long duration balloon experiments will extend this heritage of discovery to test theories of cosmic genesis through sensitive polarized surveys of the millimeter-wavelength sky. In this paper we will review the pivotal role that Antarctic balloon borne experiments have played in transforming our understanding of the Universe, and describe the scientific goals and technical approach of current and future missions.

The search for B-mode, or curl-type, polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background is the most promising technique to constrain or detect primordial gravitational waves predicted by the theory of inflation. The Bicep telescope, which observed from the South Pole for three years from 2006 through 2008, is the first experiment specifically designed to target this signal. We review the observational motivations for inflation, the advantages of B-mode observations as a technique for detecting the gravitational wave background, and the design features of Bicep that optimize it for this search. The final analysis of all three seasons of Bicep data is in progress, representing a 50% increase in integration time compared to the result from Chiang et al. (2010). A preview of the three year result includes E-mode and B-mode maps, as well as the projected constraint on r, the tensor-to-scalar ratio.

BICEP2 is an evolution from the highly successful BICEP CMB polarization experiment. In turn Keck-Array is an array of BICEP2 like receivers to achieve an additional increase in sensitivity. All these experiments are located at the South Pole in Antarctica and target the CMB B-mode polarization signal which is predicted to exist in many simpler models of Inflation at angular scales of several degrees. The design and performance of BICEP2 and Keck-Array is described and some preliminary polarization maps are presented.

The South Pole Telescope is a 10 meter telescope optimized for sensitive, high-resolution measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy and millimeter-wavelength sky. In November 2011, the SPT completed the 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ survey. The survey has led to several major cosmological results, derived from measurements of the fine angular scale primary and secondary CMB anisotropies, the discovery of galaxy clusters via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect and the resulting mass-limited cluster catalog, and the discovery of a population of distant, dusty star forming galaxies (DSFGs). In January 2012, the SPT was equipped with a new polarization sensitive camera, SPTpol, which will enable detection of the contribution to the CMB polarization power spectrum from lensing by large scale structure (the so-called “lensing B-modes”) and, on larger angular scales, a detection or improved upper limit on the primordial inflationary signal (“gravitational-wave B-modes”), thereby constraining the energy scale of Inflation. Development is underway for SPT-3G, the third-generation camera for SPT. The SPT-3G survey will cross the threshold from statistical detection of B-mode CMB lensing to imaging the fluctuations at high signal-to-noise; enabling the separation of lensing and inflationary B-modes and improving the constraint on the sum of the neutrino masses Σmν to a level relevant for exploring the neutrino mass hierarchy.

In this paper, we introduce two compact, large-throughput CMB polarimeter designs (POLAR1 and BICEP3). These pathfinder experiments will pave the way for a comprehensive multi-frequency South Pole B-mode survey that, when jointly analyzed with arcminute-scale polarization data, can conclusively answer the question whether there is an appreciable fraction (>1%) of the primordial perturbations in the form of tensor modes (gravitational waves).

Detecting neutrinos associated with the still enigmatic sources of cosmic rays has reached a new watershed with the completion of IceCube, the first detector with sensitivity to the anticipated fluxes. In this review, we will briefly revisit the rationale for constructing kilometer-scale neutrino detectors and summarize the status of the field.

In May 2011, IceCube, a neutrino telescope with one cubic kilometer instrumented volume started full operation with 5,160 sensors. The plan to build an experiment of this scale was based in part on the successful realization of a prototype experiment, the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array. Here, we will review some of the major challenges and milestones.

Construction of IceCube at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was completed at the end of 2010 after eight construction seasons. The detector consists of 5,160 digital optical modules on 86 cables with 60 modules each, viewing in total a cubic kilometer of ice between 1,450 and 2,450 meters below the surface. IceCube includes a sub-array called DeepCore consisting of 8 special cables, and providing a more densely instrumented region with a lower energy threshold in the deep center of the array. IceCube also includes an air shower array called IceTop directly above the deep detector. Optical modules in all three components of the detector are fully integrated into a single data acquisition system. Data taking and analysis began during construction and continues with the completed detector. This paper describes recent results from IceCube.

Ultra high energy cosmogenic neutrinos could be most efficiently detected in dense, radio frequency (RF) transparent media via the Askaryan effect. Building on the expertise gained by RICE, ANITA and IceCube's radio extension in the use of the Askaryan effect in cold Antarctic ice, we are currently developing an antenna array known as ARA (The Askaryan Radio Array) to be installed in boreholes extending 200 m below the surface of the ice near the geographic South Pole. The unprecedented scale of ARA, which will cover a fiducial area of ≈ 100 square kilometers, was chosen to ensure the detection of the flux of neutrinos suggested by the observation of a drop in high energy cosmic ray flux consistent with the GZK cutoff by HiRes and the Pierre Auger Observatory. Funding to develop the instrumentation and install the first prototypes has been granted, and the first components of ARA were installed during the austral summer of 2010–2011. Within 3 years of commencing operation, the full ARA will exceed the sensitivity of any other instrument in the 0.1-10 EeV energy range by an order of magnitude. The primary goal of the ARA array is to establish the absolute cosmogenic neutrino flux through a modest number of events. This information would frame the performance requirements needed to expand the array in the future to measure a larger number of neutrinos with greater angular precision in order to study their spectrum and origins.

Cometary nuclei consist of aggregates of interstellar dust particles less than ~1 μm in diameter and can produce rocky dust particles as a result of the sublimation of ice as comets enter the inner solar system. Samples of fine-grained particles known as chondritic porous interplanetary dust particles (CP-IDPs), possibly from comets, have been collected from the Earth's stratosphere. Owing to their fine-grained texture, these particles were previously thought to be condensates formed directly from interstellar gas. However, coarse-grained chondrule-like objects have recently been observed in samples from comet 81P/Wild 2. The chondrule-like objects are chemically distinct from chondrules in meteoritic chondrites, possessing higher MnO contents (0.5 wt%) in olivine and low-Ca pyroxene. In this study, we analyzed AMM samples by secondary electron microscopy and backscattered electron images for textural observations and compositional analysis. We identified thirteen AMMs with characteristics similar to those of the 81P/Wild 2 samples, and believe that recognition of these similarities necessitates reassessment of the existing models of chondrule formation.

Almost all meteorites (about 99% by number) are samples from a few hundreds of asteroids that are leftover from planetesimals and protoplanets formed within several million years after the birth of the Solar System. These meteorites record detailed evolutionary history of dust to planets, including condensation, accretion, aqueous alteration, thermal metamorphism, partial and total melting.

The astrophysical drivers for far-infrared spectroscopy of the Galactic interstellar medium using a 15m class telescope on Dome A are compelling. For the diffuse, atomic phase, the most important lines in the far-IR spectrum are OI at 63μm and CII at 158μm. These are the dominant cooling lines of the cool, neutral medium, and they show rich spectral structure in Herschel observations at low latitudes. But theory predicts that they should both be highly sub-thermal in excitation, so that the level populations are not in equilibrium with the kinetic temperature of the gas. A large single dish telescope or an interferometer may be able to study the absorption and emission to determine the optical depth and column density of atoms and the physical conditions in the emission regions. Comparison of Herschel CII spectra with 21-cm absorption spectra indicates that a significant fraction of the 158μm flux may be coming from the atomic rather than the molecular phase.