Atmospheric transmission from Dome A, Antarctica, presents new possibilities
in the field of terahertz astronomy, where space telescopes have been the only
observational tools until now. Using atmospheric transmission measurements from
Dome A with a Fourier transform spectrometer, transmission spectra and
long-term stabilities have been analyzed at 1.461 THz, 3.393 THz, 5.786 THz and
7.1 THz, which show that important atmospheric windows for terahertz astronomy
open for a reasonable length of time in the winter season. With large aperture
terahertz telescopes and interferometers at Dome A, high angular resolution
terahertz observations are foreseen of atomic fine-structure lines from ionized
gas and a water ice feature from protoplanetary disks.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Advances in Polar Scienc