As part of the conceptual and preliminary design processes of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the TMT site testing team has spent the last five years measuring the atmospheric properties of five candidate mountains in North and South America with an unprecedented array of instrumentation. The site testing period was preceded by several years of analyses selecting the five candidates, Cerros Tolar, Armazones and Tolonchar in northern Chile; San Pedro Martir in Baja California, Mexico and the 13 North (13N) site on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Site testing was concluded by the selection of two remaining sites for further consideration, Armazones and Mauna Kea 13N. It showed that all five candidates are excellent sites for an extremely large astronomical observatory and that none of the sites stands out as the obvious and only logical choice based on its combined properties. This is the first article in a series discussing the TMT site testing project.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0904.1183,
title = {Thirty Meter Telescope Site Testing I: Overview},
author = {M. Schoeck and S. Els and R. Riddle and W. Skidmore and T. Travouillon and R. Blum and E. Bustos and G. Chanan and S. G. Djorgovski and P. Gillett and B. Gregory and J. Nelson and A. Otarola and J. Seguel and J. Vasquez and A. Walker and D. Walker and L. Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.1183},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in PASP, April 2009 issue