  AST3-2 is the second of the three Antarctic Survey Telescopes, aimed at
wide-field time-domain optical astronomy. It is located at Dome A, Antarctica,
which is by many measures the best optical astronomy site on the Earth's
surface. Here we present the data from the AST3-2 automatic survey in 2016 and
the photometry results. The median 5$\sigma$ limiting magnitude in $i$-band is
17.8 mag and the light curve precision is 4 mmag for bright stars. The data
release includes photometry for over 7~million stars, from which over 3,500
variable stars were detected, with 70 of them newly discovered. We classify
these new variables into different types by combining their light curve
features with stellar properties from surveys such as StarHorse.
