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PLATO instrument module at Dome A (courtesy: Zhenxi Xhu and Zhou Xu)

It finally conked out in perishing cold and darkness, but the 204 days that a robotic astronomy station managed to successfully fulfil its winter mission in a dark, remote location on the Antarctic plateau is being hailed as a remarkable success.

Built by UNSW scientists, PLATO (short for Plateau Observatory), is a self-contained automated platform for conducting year-round experiments. No other unmanned observatory has survived for so long in such conditions.

Its deployment in January 2008 by a multi-national collaboration including China, the US, UK and Australia marked the culmination of centuries of effort by mankind to find the best location on Earth for stargazing.

Last summer's expedition by the Polar Research Institute of China, consisting of 16 people in six specialised vehicles, took three weeks to make the 1200 km long overland traverse to the high point (called Dome A) from Zhongshan station on the Antarctic coast.

The observatory has had to withstand some of the most extreme conditions on Earth. Temperatures at Dome A dropped to minus 75 C in winter, and the air pressure is barely half of that at sea level. Since its deployment, PLATO's seven telescopes have tracked the heavens above the South Pole while its site-testing instruments measured astronomic parameters such as sky darkness and atmospheric turbulence.

Since April 20, it had been operating in 24 hour-a-day darkness, an effect caused by the Earth's tilt from the Sun and Antarctica's location at the base of the southern hemisphere.

"When PLATO stopped last Saturday morning at around 8 am Australian eastern standard time it had been running continuously for 204 days, 22 hours and 30 minutes - a new record for a high power remote observatory in Antarctica," says UNSW astronomer, Professor Michael Ashley. "We are very excited to have operated throughout the Antarctic winter, and to have come within a couple of weeks of seeing sunrise."

The stoppage resulted from an exhaust leak that reduced power to PLATO's banks of batteries, computers, engines and communication systems. Scientists hope to regain communication with PLATO when its solar panels kick in, shortly after sunrise in the last week of August. For more information visit the PLATO instrument module web page.

UNSW astronomers believe their Antarctic observations could reveal the birth of stars and planets in remote galaxies. These distant galaxies emit phenomenal amounts of thermal energy at terahertz wavelengths - a part of the electromagnetic spectrum between the far-infrared and microwave wavebands.

"Of the many colours in the electromagnetic spectrum of light, terahertz-waves are perhaps the last unexplored frontier," says Professor Ashley. PLATO includes a prototype instrument to "peer through windows in the terahertz atmosphere".

Dome A is the only location on the Earth's surface where these observations can be made. For more information visit the PLATO Pre-HEAT web page.

To date, Earth-based terahertz astronomy has been limited in its ability to study the cosmos because minute traces of water vapour in the air absorb terahertz light from space before reaching the ground. The Antarctic plateau is ideal for astronomy because it has clear skies, it doesn't rain, clouds are rare and the air is so still the stars barely twinkle.

For more images of PLATO visit the PLATO image gallery web page.

Media contact: Dan Gaffney - 0411 156 015